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THE STRICKLAND PRESS CLASCOW 1947
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This is the third edition of tfai* work. First published in 1929. it quickly went out of print and was reprinted For many years it has been in demand, but unobtainable. An introduction brings tins new edition t*>-to-<kte.
Volumes have been written in tbe past explaining the capitalist character. of war, and exposing tbe financial manipulations which cause war. But this book tackles the question from a new angle and really oomes to tfripa with war. It shows bow war is fosr tered in youth organisations, connived at by socialist workers who see big wages in munitions, and exploited by the socialist parliamentarian who sees in national flag waving an easy road1 to the consummation of his careerist dreams.
Guy Aldred analyses the situation and comes to his own conclusions. His remedy is summed up in the now well-known Workers' Pledge which ends the book.
N
AT GRIPS WITH WAR
THIRD EDITION
THE STRICKLAND PRESS GLASGOW 1947
PAGE
1929 Foreword - - - 19
IV French & Germans 38 V Jingo Sheep 42
VIII Socialism—Checking War! 62
X War's One Alternative—
XI At Grips : No More Wtar—How! - - 87
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INTRODUCTION
The first edition of this work was published in 1929, and the second in 1932. A printer's error was responsible for a slightly rhetorical variation in one chapter. Otherwise the second edition was an exact reproduction of the first.
Both editions were illustrated. There were ten illustrations by Kritikos, and one by Henry Bernard. I have been compelled to omit, these excellent pictorial indictments of war from the present edition. It is my intention to publish a complete edition of this work later, and so to restore these illustrations.
There were six appendices, as follows: —
(1) 44 Unemployment, War and Crime." By Sir Thomas More, 1480-1535. This is a chapter from More's 44 Utopia," preceded by a very short account of his career;
(2) 44 Diplomacy and Tactics." By Voltaire, 1594-1678. Two vital short essays against war.
(3) 44 Martial Glory." By Anatolc France. A remarkable
essay, in many ways recalling More's 44 Utopia," specially translated from 44 The Opinions of Jerome Coignard."
(4) 44 The Glory of War." By Douglas Jerrold, the great
English humorist, 1803-57. Abridged from an essay
written in 1834, but as readable today as when written 113 years ago.
(5) " War's Eternal Cause." By Adhermar Schwitzguebel.
Specially translated. The first two chapters of a book entitled " War and Peace," written in 1871, after the Franco-Prussian War. The author was driven by boycott and economic persecution to retire from the socialist movement in later life.
(6) 44 The Way to Peace." By Leo Tolstoy, 1828-1910. This was Tolstoy's famous letter to the Swedish Peace Party, dated from Moscow, January 1899. This letter was forbidden to be circulated in Soviet Russia. 44 The Way to Peace," including Tolstoy's address to conscientious objcctors, has been circulated widely in separate pamphlet form.
To the sixth appendix I wrote a brief introduction upholding Tolstoy's views against the parliamentary Socialists. The subsequent careerism of these individuals, their rabid patriotism during the Second World War, their support of the coalition policy of unconditional surrender, and their post-war policy of peace time conscription, with a hankering after direction of labour, all tend to prove how prophetic and accurate was this indictment. Whatever security parliamentarism may offer to the socialist agitator turned careerist, it spells nothing but disappointment and disaster for the working-man. It offers him no means of overthrowing the system of exploitation and it gives bin: no security within that system. After the 1945 election Brliain witnessed the spectacle of the Labour Government's first great measure of reform: it increased the annual income of M.P.'s from £600 to £1,000 per year. Compare this with the pension given to Old Age Workers. Will any one pretend that this manufacture of M.P.'s into hired defenders of the capitalist system, was intended by the first rugged parliamentarians who urged payment of members?
In the introductory note to this appendix, I wrote:
Tolstoy attaeks the workshop committee idea of confusing munition wage-labor struggles with the stand agacmt capitalism and war. The accuracy of his argument is emphasised by an excerpt from " Forward " for 26th January, 1918.
"Thos^ who advocate workers' control in the workshops will be interested to know that David Kirkwood, who is employed as forrman in a munitions establisment in (ilasgow, has, by abolishing workshop tyranny and by using tact and brains, succeeded in securing the British record in output for his department."
The author of this interesting paragraph was Thomas Johnston, now Under Secretary of 8tate for Scotland, who stands for this very programme Tolstoy so well condemned. Johnston Included among his colleagues in the House of Commons this same David Kirkwood. War goes on and the Clyde workers are no better off.
Labor Governments stand by disarmament by mutual agreement. In opposition to such absurdities we take our stand by Tolstoy's call to the complete starvation of war—the embargo which means resistance and the General Strike, the eottapse of all militarism, invasion, and exploitation.
Thomas Johnston has been Secretary of State for Scotland since this book was published in 1929, although it cannot be said that his occupancy of that position made any great difference to the condition of the working-man in Scotland. The workers must realise that a!t the political excitement and sensationalism associated with his return to
parliament and his subsequent elevations, have left their lot unchanged. No one has benefited except Thomas Johnston, and he has been reduced to utter and complete mediocrity of expression. His " Socialism " has ended in becoming a tourist salesman of Scotland in the U.S.A.
David Kirk wood, who once offered the resistance of his dead body in defence of the rent strikers, and so got returned to parliament, has set up in business with his sons, whilst remaining a labor M.P. My press-cutting book gives the names of those who intrigued to secure a parliamentary career for Kirkwood. I hope that they are proud of their activity, for their clamour has been responsible for the complete betrayal of the workers' struggle against capitalism and militarism. I have indicted the Third Labour Government for its peace-time militarism and its broadening of the base of entrenched reaction by raising the salaries of its M.P.'s As 1 write it is busy destroying India by a concession of bogus independence and pandering to royalty in a way that should make Keir Hardie turn in his grave. What dull dastards these mealy-mouthed, self-seeking, incompetent and cowardly M.P.'s are.
It may be asked why parliamentarism upholds monarch-ism and militarism, contrary to the republican and anti-militarist traditions of the socialist pioneers, whether parliamentarians or anti-parliamentarians. For in the beginning the movement was not divided on the question of republicanism and anti-militarism. Such division is an inevitable development.
When I embraced anti-parliamentarism in 1906, I did s» because 1 realised thatt parliamentarism could not save society from militarism, war and disaster. The theory of parliamentarism is the theory of escapism, of impossible palliation, of fear, surrender and careerism. The parliamentarian is essentially a political coward, who talks himself into the sacrifice of his birthright for a mess of pottage. But for the element of fear, that economic need lor status and security in class society, anti-parliamentarism would have replaced parliamentarism long since. Anti-parliamentarism is a definite challenge to class society. It politically outlaws Us propagandists, and withdraws them from all possibility <>l economic security. Youth plays at outlawry and agitation, but maturity and age dislike the menace of such a situation. Consequently desertions arc plentiful, and the forthright movement dwindles. Parliamentarism perfects its machinery of power, careerism and corruption. State incomes, and increased state incomes, fall to the lot of successful parliamentarians. The parliamentary platform becomes ever more popular. Oratory, which belongs to sincerity and purpose, is stifled. Slogans replace principles, and clamour takes the place of thought. Universal suffrage under capitalism ends in militarism, debacle and dictatorship. Reaction is complete.
The present situation of the world shows how true is this indictment of parliamentarism. The error is often made that the alternative to parliamentarism is violence or dictatorship. It is assumed that direct action must be opposed to democracy. This is an incorrect assumption. Democracy expresses the fundamental right of the human being. It has a social aspect and also an individual one Democracy vulgarly is assumed to mean majority rule. It does mean very often the right of majority administration as a concession to fact and common sense. But democracy also means fundamental rights for the minority, particularly the right to dissent openly, and to maintain, and to urge unpopular propaganda. Democracy means the right of the minority to change society by the propagation of ideas. This right has to be upheld and defended by the powerful but dissenting majority. As parliamentary society moves towards its decline, this great idea is denied, especially by the socialist parliamentarians. Sometimes these parliamentarians flirt with ideas of direct action, as did the Russian Bolsheviks, and the Third International. But this " communist " idea of direct action is merely the idea of violence. Lenin, in a terrible speech that he made in Moscow in 1920, stupidly applauded by the Bolshevik Old Guard, proclaimed the right of the government to suppress ideas just as it would suppress an armed rebellion. He declared that ideas were more menacing than armies. This may indeed be true, but it was both a tragedy and an atrocity for a man who had come to power through the demand for free speech in propaganda to adopt such an attitude. It destroyed the soul of his message, and made his life activity a sordid struggle for power. I do not believe that in the beginning he intended his life to serve anv such purpose. I believe he genuinely stood for liberty and emancipation. But the success of his cause undermined his integrity and destroyed his purpose. When he sneered so consistently at bourgeois democracy, and proclaimed so loudly the right of govern-
mcnts to suppress, he pioneered Stalinism and signed the death warrant of his colleagues. Similarly, \yhen Trotsky-wrote his flamboyant and unqualified defence of terrorism,, he justified his own later persecution and assassination. Violence is dictatorship and not direct action, whilst parliamentarism is camouflaged violence and not democracy.
Democracy must be preserved because it is fundamental to society and to individual liberty. If existing political institutions cannot give adeqatc expression to the principles of democracy these institutions must be changed, whether by modification, transformation, or complete revolution. For example, national states, which are the very acme of parliamentarism, must go, and give place to world society and world administration, or World Government. Even the way of bringing this about must be changed from the past. During the parliamentary era the workers' advance guard believed in underground conspiracies in each country, governed by an alleged international. This gave us the debacles of the First, Second and Third Internationals, and culminated in a shadowy anarchist International and the inglorious farce of two differently organised Fourth Internationals. The result has been the death of the international idea.
it is obvious today that working-class politics are in liquidation whilst the machine of working-class political career ism is more powerful and more centralised than at any other time in its history. This huge machine is voiceless, and without dignity, character or repute. It is utterly incapable of coming to grips with social and economic realities, and it offers the workers no protection against war, militarism, or diplomacy. As I write these lines we are threatened with a coal and fuel shortage in the winter. This is sensationally ascribed to the war, to conditions in Europe, and to the past private ownership of the coal mines. Whatever truth there may be in these explanations they are truths of degree, emphasis, or ornament, but they are not the fundamental reasons. If one picks up the Australian papers, one discovers the same sensational complaints and warnings as to fuel shortages and crises in their columns. The explanation is that behind the crisis is not the fact of past destruction so much as preparation for future destruction. Parliamentarism is concerned with hiding the truth from democracy, whereas real politics would have every citizen of the world a fully enlightened person. Parliamentarism
has supplied a blindfold for propaganda. It represents the militaristic and imperialistic side-tracking to destruction of humanity itself. On this account parliamentarism must be destroyed. It is but the broadened basis of dictatorship and monarchism.
The workers are under some debt to Marx and Engels for their excellent socialist and historical studies; but it is a pity that these prophets did not possess the vision tc avoid pioneering parliamentarism, and so side-tracking the working-class movement. It may be admitted that Social Revolution was the logic of their thought, but it was not the logic of their activity. Despite Marx's strong defence of violence, and his contempt for burgeois law, the practical result of their endeavours, was to favour the reactionary, careerist, counter-revolutionary call of Lassalle: " Through Universal Suffrage to Victory I"
Universal suffrage should lead to the victory of liberty and democracy, but there must be a basis of economic justice. The citizens must be equals otherwise the universal suffrage becomes a mockery. Although the idea of universal suffrage arose as a challenge within society, to the wrongs of social inequality, and although it contains an element of political truth, within economically unequal society political unversal suffrage presents no solution to the social problem. Milton rightly claimed that there was no society between unequals. This means that political justice cannot precede economic justice, but rather must be established within true economic society. Democracy is right. Democracy must not be denied or repudiated. The mis-called communists, who ridicule democracy and propound ideas of dictatorship, are in error. Hut the parliamentary socialists, who defend political democracy as a means of translating capitalist society into socialist society, are no less in error. At the conclusion of their efforts the "communists" and "socialists" unite to support militarist society, and in place of socialism, they establish a mere state collectivism and bureaucracy. Marx, Engels, and Lassalle, despite all the learned attacks made by Marx on Lassallianism, belong to the same social reactionary camp. Fundamentally they are parliamentarians, and their parliamentarism has no message of emancipation for society.
Opposed to Marx and Lassalle was the great French thinker P. J. Proudhon. Events, those stern but true schoolmasters, have shown that Proudhon was right when
he declared that universal suffrage was the counter-revolution. Proudhon may have erred in many of the things he said. Some of his writing may have been vague and metaphysical as suggested by Marx. He may have dragged some of his ideals out of the sky instead of discovering them growing in the soil of society. In these respects some of Marx's criticism may have been justified. The fact remains, the final metaphysic belongs to Marx and not to Proudhon. Proudhon declared that parliamentary democracy was a delusion, and that parliamentarism must end in debacle. Where Marx, Engels, and Lassalle looked to the progressive conquest of emancipation by the common people, through parliamentary activity, Proudhon had the vision and the wit to declare that emancipation came not progressively but spontaneously; that it rose not from the parliamentary conquest of the State, but by the liquidation of the State in society. Proudhon proved himself- to be the optimist whom no triumph of reaction could conquer 01 intimidate. Proudhon was right. Marx, his most bittei opponent, was wrong.
In 1886, in his preface to Marx's " Capital," Engels, all unconsciously, threatens to adopt Proudhon's position when he anticipates an anti-parliamentary rounding-off of the class struggle. Engels avers that the time will come when " we can almost calculate the moment " when the unemployed will settle the social question. He pictures the number " swelling from year to year " and describes how each succeeding winter brings up afresh the great question: "What to do with the Unemployed?"
Engels sums up the experience of the poor in a prophetic, picture of the retreat of Labour Parliamentarism from the 1918 Armistice to the declaration of the Second World Wat on 3rd September, 1939: —
The sighed for period of prosperity will not come; as often m
we seem to perceive its heralding symptoms so often do they again
Out of such disappointment there should come proletarian advancement and not retrogression of understanding. The w#rker should replace his faculty to succumb with the power to resist. During the peace years parliamentarism nullifies this effort to understand the struggle with its clamorous promises of reformism. Parliamentarism is really a very low form of materialism, and it measures the worker in the
terms of economic sordidness. It gives him no credit for rebel courage. There is truth in this estimate, otherwise the worker would not remain a slave. It is strange to realise how the heroic private soldier in battle can prove to be a cowardly starveling in the peace interlude between wars. Parliamentarism plays on this fact, and so succeeds in reducing comprehending agitators into ignorant statesmen. This is called the progressive conquest of society by the common people. It is really a concentration of attention on domestic evils for the purpose of hiding the economic international conflict which makes war inevitable. It conceals the dangers of diplomacy by clamour for employment. Then comes world war, and it is realised that out of years of struggle and agitation there has come stagnation and disaster. The careerist turns to a new clamour, and the worker conceals his disappointment beneath the passion and excitement of race hatred. War is a cheap and cowardly glory, and it promises great expectations as a solace for the misery of peace-time starvation. At the conclusion of the war the worker is promised prosperity, and a fresh move is made towards the next stage of social disaster. This evolution has been repeated down the years on the snowball principle, and to-day the world is brought by an inglorious development of parliamentarism near to the calamity of a threatened Third World War, to be waged under threat of atomic destruction for all mankind.
Proud of their brief authority, proud of their tawdry posturing before high heaven in their petty State uniforms, the careerists of parliamentarism face the problem of civilisation's collapse or total atomic destruction with an air of astonished bewilderment, whilst giving all their energies to aid and subsidise this inglorious aim of science. They have no solution because they have no purpose and no courage, for they are without both principles and vision. Like a quack in the market-place, they have to produce a panacea, and so they produce, out of their bag of magic, pills for earthquakes and plasters for ulcers. The world drifts towards an appalling war, and M.P.s are concerned pureiv and simply with their higher salaries and State pensions. Never since the French Revolution have condemned marionettes made such farcical parade, dancing on a carpet of pretence stretched across the abyss of destruction.
I have read but rarely of- a Parliamentarian who progressed with the years, even in his personal understanding
of things. The man with the Red Flag, especially if he waves it with excessive enthusiasm, sent to Parliament tends to end up the man in livery, a wearer of the gold braid. In the inevitable hour of crisis he is without policy or purpose, and his philosophy of self-success is futile. John Burns and Ramsay MacDonald both failed and Labour Parliamentarism since 1945 has but improved on their progressive failure. Revolutionary change in society, the fundamental liquidation of authoritarian society in free society, the end of all organisation for war, and the development of a ministry of peace are not approached via reform, but, on the contrary, via reaction.
Realising this fact, I am not appalled by the failure of the Third Labour Government. I am not afraid of Reaction. But I am determined to overcome Reaction. I ask the workers to return to the principles of proletarian unity and action propounded by the. First International, not as an underground aim 01 society conspiring against nations, states, or governments, but as the open and avowed aims of world citizenship, liquidating the nation state by open and universal suffrage in world society. This is a challenge that ends conspiracy and treason forever and advances the struggle of humanity to a higher plane than any yet conceived by mankind in mass. It is the re-discovery of society itself. It is applied Humanism. It is the method anticipated and outlined by Proudhon. It is the genuine way of Mutualism and the Commune.
Proudhon indicated no palliative for poverty. He was right. For poverty cannot be cured by palliation. He saw poverty leading not to social revolution, as the first step, but to reaction, and then revolution. In this he was right. With the knowledge acquired through experience since Proudhon's time, I would apply his analysis of the development of the revolution: —
(1) Reaction Inevitable.—This notion is a direct challenge to all the careerists who seek votes by making promises they never redeem. This is a challenge to all those illusions of evasion: war avoidance without thought, struggle, or resistance: world-peace without liquidation of the nation state and the existing finance system. It opposes the drifting notion of lightly won reforms and happiness. It makes democracy the business of the individual citizen and not the prerogative of a party or group.
(2) Reaction Causes Revolution.—Having despaired of bettering: their condition without responsible thought and effort, the common people turn to the task of overcoming social disaser. They realise that there must be some social upheaval, but that revolution does not involve the violence that acquiescence in military society demands. They realise that the individual citizen must withdraw his allegiance from the nation-state and give it to world-society. Political careerism must be repudiated and destroyed. Every tenement dweller must champion social revolution or the complete liquidation of political society in economic society, national sovereignty in world commonwealth. We must all be citizens of the world.
(3) Principle of Association.—The next step towards the great social liquidation is the association of misery and despair, of poverty and idealism, for and in action. Political and religious differences are eliminated. These barriers are broken down, and it is felt that such differences have a democratic right of co-existence. Economic distinctions are overcome and amalgamated. Actually, political society tends to give way to a new organisation in the form ot Councils of Action. This is actually the emergence of the Commune, replacing political society and rearing a structure of real social action, in which liberty and equity or social justice find a common expression. The Council of Action becomes the involuntary theory and practice of- the people. It is living social democracy, and brings about a world society. The principle of association replaces the nation state with that idea of world citizenship and set;-sovereignty that involves world government.
(4) Principle of Authority.—Parliamentarism completely resolves itself into the theory and practice of the nation state. This is really the class state. Hitherto socialists have not realised how thoroughly the national division of society involves the class state organisation. Inevitably, within every nation there are two classes, the rich and the poor. The politics of every nation consists in keeping th? rich powerful by making the poor subject and content. This exploitation is aided by the struggle for power between the nations. The abolition of the nation stale involves the abolition of class society. This is how the struggle defines itself: usefulness against authority; industrial or productive society against politics; the Council or Commune organisation against parliamentarism; universal anti-mlitarism, which means the end of that vast organisation
of social parasitism, associated with the government and bureaucracy of the modern nation state; the world government, which differs from existing- governments in its sym-plicity and directness, and its complete negation of all those overlapping organs of government that constitute the state. World government does not mean state society but Administrative Society. World government defines the goal and method of the social revolution.
(5) The Social liquidation.—This is the actual struggle. The issue of the struggle is the organisation of the economic forces of society by the producers and distributors themselves. It involves many activities and includes the right of civil disobedience to militarism. The result is the actual dissolution of the nation state in world society, and of political government in economic organisation. This means universal pacifism. It is also universal socialism. It is the triumph and end of the revolution and anti-militarist struggle.
There is no royal road to this social change. No one party possesses a monopoly of theory as to how the struggle should be waged. No one party is one hundred per cent, correct all the time in its actions. Within the ranks of the oppressed people a thousand groups and forces play their part, some intentionally, some unintentionally. Consciously or unconsciously the tendency must be to destroy war, to negate imperialism, to overcome racialism, and to develop more and more the emotion of world citizenship and universal democracv.
As some atonement for the appendices that I have omitted from this edition, I have added three small notes relating to the authors cited in the second chapter.
I notice that, in the original foreword, for some now unknown reason, I use the editorial plural. Were 1 writing that foreword to-dav I would use the simpler and more direct first person singular.
GUV A. ALDRED.
Glasgow, 20th August, 1947.
1929 FOREWORD.
In 1909, we published a pamphlet, entitled Militarism &nd Revolution. A second edition of this pamphlet, unrevised, was issued in 1912. This pamphlet consisted of three chapters from a larger work we had planned on the subject of Organisation. This work was never published owing to poverty.
We became convinced of the evil of war white vet a Christian and a Boy Preacher. As we progressed to Atheism and Socialism, our resolution to oppose war and militarism increased in fervour. We cannot understand how Christians can support war but we should imagine that Atheists and Socialists ought to oppose war on clearer and more fundamental grounds than Christians. The argument from a mere book of local tradition anent the repute of a man who lived long ago, however wise he may have been, is a very poor argument when contrasted against that from humanity and fundamental economic and social rights. Even so, if men and women believe in that man or book, and that man preaches the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God, there is no ground for militarism and war. Brotherhood « not consistent with murder and war is no more reconcilable with Christian principles than with Atheist or Socialist principles. This abstract, though sound statement, is of small moment, however, against the fact, the terrible sordid fact, that Christians, Atheists, and Socialists all equally incline to glory in war and militarism.
We object to abstract opposition to war and militarism. Hence this work.
Closing the first chapter of Militarism and Revolution in 1908, we wrote: —
" In face of these faets I call upon the workers—should ever Lord Roberts's Conscription Scheme, Social Democratic Lassallean Army Schemes with Military High Road Solutions of the Untmployed Problem Appendages beeome law—to do what I shall do, rtvolt and decline to serve."
The story of our opposition to the World War. of our discussions, meetings, resistance, court-martials, and imprisonments, can be told elsewhere. All that matters is our thought. Properly, all such discussion should be published as an appendix. Perhaps, one day, fortune will smile on us
♦
and this will be possible. Meantime, this work is published to perform a useful educational work, and to register opposition to war.
Embodied in this work are two chapters from Militarism and Revolution. The rest of that pamphlet belongs properly to a study of parliamentarism and will be included in an essay on that subject. Militarism and Revolution will not be republished as a separate pamphlet.
There is also embodied, entirely, in this work,—except for a few excerpts omitted here because used in the text of Government by Labor and Socialism or Parliament,— Socialism and War, issued in 1915. This pamphlet will not be reprinted therefore. Much of the matter contained in Socialism and War was revised from essays published in The Spur.
Although we are far from satisfied with the present compilation, it represents growth towards a complete work. And as Bakunin so quaintly yet so effectively apologised, life is a fragment! Progress is not smooth and even but stumbling, halting, and disjointed! That, at least, is our sad experience.
In March, 1915, we published this announcement in the columns of the Spur: —
" * AT GRIPS WITH WAR/ " The Book to End War. " IT IS
" The Handbook of the Revolution—The Manifesto of The Nsar International—The Herald of the New Epoch—The Book every worker must read.
" Other Books Against War
" Debated Its Horrors--Exposed Its Scandals—Condemned Governments—Censured Wealth—Blamed Capitalists.
" THIS BOOK
" Exhibits the terror of peace—Explains First Causes—Dismisses Governments—indicts Poverty—Puts aside Capitalists—Speaks to Every Worker—Convicts Wage-Labor—Traces the Bloodshed of Battle to the Workers' bench, his home, his organisations.
" This Book will End War—It will Kill Compromise, the organised PROMOTER OF WAR—It will Make the Workers Repudiate their Assassin interests as wage-slaves and hired stool-pigeons.
" It is the First Book to Define and stand for the Remedy for War instead of weeping over its Horrors. Your interest In this book will be intense. It will capture your pal for the Revolution. It Is the most essential book of the time."
Alas! It was never published. We were in debt to the printer and could not undertake its publication without assistance. No assistance was forthcoming.
Fourteen years have passed. We are still in the depths of debt and poverty. Only a fool would be writing this work under the economic conditions that oppress us at the moment. But here is the book, not complete, but tolerably full. It embodies, as stated, Militarism and Revolution and Socialism and War and carries the title. At Grips With War.
A certain Labor M.P. has apologised that he subscribed to certain sentiments in his callow vouth. We are not too sure of the 44 callow youth " but let that statement pass on the assumption of its possible correctness. We would not like to urge such a plea in defence of a recantation. Whatever its literary faults, this work stands. It embodies in our age the philosophy of our callow youth, developed and matured. Of that consistency, of that unity of growth and purpose, of that essential life's integrity of living and vision, we are gratefully proud. Consistency lends glorv to the evening of one's days and graciousness to poverty.
GLY A. Alijrf.D.
Bakunin House, Glasgow, X.IV.
Sunday, October 6, 1929.
i. Militarism and Revolution.
The Anti-Parliamentarian holds that Capitalism, in every department of its being, is a system of militarism. By this definition ol capitalism's criminal character, the Anti-Parliamentarian means that capitalism is a system of soulless regimentation of ordered irresponsible obedience, founded in fear and power of invasion. Consequently, capitalism necessitates, ruthlessly and inevitably, militarism. Consciousness of this fact compelled the Labor M.P.s in 1924 to legislate for war and imperialism, whereas, as workers and prisoners for conscience, they had refused to serve war in 1914-18. Members of Parliament cannot conserve the interests of the capitalist State without thinking in terms of war.
The Anti-Parliamentarian believes that capitalism implies war. The fact is beyond question. Hence the Anti-Parliamentarian opposes as much the futility as the hypocrisy of pacifism. Essentially a realist and a utilitarian, the Anti-Parliamentarian considers that the futility of pacifism is more lamentable than its hypocrisy, because futility is mischievous, whereas hyprocisy is merely nauseous. The Passage of the Union of Democratic Control from outlawry and the jail to respectablity and the Treasury Benches at Westminster is a detail of no importance. Men with red flags have become political lickspittles in the past en route to obscurity and worthlessness. The conclusion is appalling only because it registers the futility of pacifist demonstration and agitation. Democracy that automatically liquidates itself in Imperialism is ineffectiveness at its zenith. It is the paralysis of pacifism and the triumph of militarism. Glory stalks abroad and raises its bloody sword in arrogant assertion of its claim that might is right and that the sword is greater than the pen. Parliamentarianism is not the goal so much as the grave of democratic pacifism.
Parliament is critical ineptitude. It answers war with platitude and silences anti-militarism with state allegiance, royal oaths and kingly masquerades. It places gold braid and cocked hats above human struggle and the call on conscience. No parliamentarian can be an anti-militarist and no parliamentary discussion can end war. Only the direct thought and action of the common people can stop war. Anti-Parliamentarianism alone spells war against war.
To the Anti-Parliamentarian, it is mockery to denounce the horrors of the military battle-field without warring against the fundamental horror of the industrial battlefield, out of which it arises. Cannon-ball, rifle-shot, and national ferocious little-funkism, may be murderous enough expressions of capitalist exploitation; but, actually they are the lesser militarism. Far more terrible is the steady daily murder of the mind and being of humanity, the daily servitude of slavish bread-winning, of brain subject to appetite, thought to animal desire. That is the continuous murder of the soul of mankind, the constant blood-pressure of capitalism, a social nightmare of sacrifice and debacle. Power is hideous in essence, in repose as well as in explosion.
War is a product of commerce, like prostitution, crime, and piety. These three arc one, a trinity in unity, and the unity is poverty. Proudhon, repeating the definition of a French Revolutionist, Brissot, who recanted, declared property to be robbery. We do not quarrel with the definition, but we would substitute another definition. Property is poverty, poverty of health and wealth, of love and genius, of life and morale. Property is poverty unto death. Property is war, which is murder.
The hired assassin is the worker in uniform. He learns his servility in the workshop. His servitude is the attribute of his position as a wage-worker. His violence to order is part and parcel of the stagnating system of law and order. The workers' assassin's uniform is true to his economic status—cheap and nasty, coarse and tawdry like his shoddy industrial outfit and civilian cloth. Capitalism runs true to pattern in every particular.
Militarism is inevitable in class-society. It is bound up with the marriage code and every form of scholastic and priestly professionalism. Pacifism, like honor, therefor, is impossible. The issue is not neutrality, not peace by treaty, not disarmament, but war or commonwealth, the merging of the nations, the end of monarchies and terri-torialisms, world wealth and world citizenship, a Workers' industrial Republic encompassing the globe.
One cannot seek a genuine reduction of armaments without challenging the very foundations of bourgeois society. One cannot believe in Mammon without worshipping at the altars of Moloch. " The wages-system is one of militarism. Profits imply markets and pseudo-patriotisms. Exploitation demands cannon-fodder and destruction. Accordingly, the Anti-Parliamentarian declares that the only answer to Capitalist Imperialism is World Communism, Cosmopolitan Working Class Republicanism.
All nationalisms must go.
All patriotisms must go.
All alienisms and antagonistic sovereignties must go.
Passports must vanish.
Political society must be liquidated.
The world must become a single nation, a single brotherhood, merging or retaining its several languages, but moved by a common economic impulse and social integrity.
Sovereignty must belong to each individual. Allegiance must be recaptured from states, churches, and creeds, and returned to each individual's own conscience. Society must be a merging of desires, not a dictatorship of subjection.
The opposition to militarism must be prosaic, practical, and concrete. Idealism must find expression in realism. Nations must be reduced to parishes. As science conquers distance, the mind of man must widen, whereas to-day it narrows. War by air is the perversion of science. It is the cannibalism of knowledge, the parochial pauperism of the universe. It is not glorious but inglorious to murder from the air; for it is war on your immediate neighbour. It is not world war but a village scandal. The conquest of- distance renders statesmen petty diplomats, tea-cup chatterers, and mischief-makers; war is contemptible. World-war is now but a parish feud that the workers must stamp out of society.
The issue between Peace and War, the Anti-Parliamen-tarian conceives to be a struggle, direct and imperative, between Capital and Labor. The Anti-Parliamentarian would define it as a struggle between militarism and revolution, except that this latter definition may not be exact enough. Revolution in France did not end militarism but developed conscription. Revolution in Russia evolved into a Red Army and finally into a capitalist counter-revolutionary state. Though proceeding from revolution, militarism created in old-time France and contemporary Russia counter-revolution. Actually, if the worker can but conceive of all that revol-u.tion means, the issue between war and peace is the issue-between militarism and revolution, between the state and society, between Empire and the Commune. Only a P'edera-ated World Commune of Labor can end war. The one hope of world peace is the direct social and individual self-emancipation of the working class from the thraldom, economic and therefore mental and moral of class society. To end war, the workers must become society: and society must proclaim Communism, must accept revolution and regeneration, must be born again.
II.—Pacifist Futility.
Pacifists are the theorists of futility, the saints of hell. They would exorcise the grim logic of death with the passive scholarship of vain tradition. They would leave murder and bloodshed economically entrenched in society and attack it with the bold vigour of empty words. Their peace is a melody of pleasing phrase that soothes the leisure of politicians and cases the conscience of diplomats. It is the demonstrative half-holiday of capitalism resting between the labours of its mighty wars. It is a flight of fancy graciously permitted to the pulpit by the minister of war on the understanding that in all practical emergencies the Lord of Hosts is a mighty God of Battle and the pulpit a recruiting rostrum.
Anti-Militarism is grateful to pacifism for its scholarship. It agrees gladly that the great traditional religious founders-of the world denounced war and all collective as well as individual murder. Equally unequivocal have been the declarations on these points of the world's philosophers. Stoic, Epicurean, Christian are at one in their opposition to the putrid glory and most real horror of the battlefield. But what avails such unity of words against the economic factors that preserve militarism? Gladly do we ransack the literature of the nations, preserve the anti-militarist thought of the ages. But we do so only that the thought might incarnate itself in might, and militarism be destroyed for ever. Thought is sometimes not the soul but only the ornament of struggle. Words are sometimes the gold of life. At others they are but the tinsel brilliance. We would war against war and not play at pious peace. Peace is not a communist gesture nor yet the workers' goal. It is a normal need for social growth, a condition not an aspiration, a negation not an achievement. Under capitalism peace is only
a breathing time, a tension maintained at enormous cost of strained, tired energy. Such strain secures no leisure to the hosts who toil. Without capitalism peace would be society at case. Therefore there can be no peace without revolution, no peace within class-society, no peace without the class-war be fought first, and class society be destroyed. To preach peace we must proclaim the class struggle. And the literature of the pacifists, be the writers what they may, must be viewed in the light of this understanding.
Shakespeare has revealed how lor a fantasy and a trick of fame thousands go to their graves like beds. But behind the fantasy is there no moving power of economic interest, behind the trick no driving force of economic, necessity that makes fame an instrument of economic struggle ? Addison has contended that the conqueror is beheld by the dazzled eye in the false glaring light which conquest and success have thrown upon him. But is not the eye dazzled by some immediate greed ? Is not the false glaring light of conquest and success the limelight capitalism substitutes for the sunlight of worth and service ? Could the conqueror he but viewed rightly, said Addison, he would be seen black with murder, and with crimes that would strike the soul with horror but to mention. Truly so: but can conquerors be viewed rightly within capitalist society. Is not the system black with murder Are not the crimes of capitalism from which war arises, sickening to the soul The conqueror is at one with his environment. He suits the setting. There is no flagrant outrage of propriety for him who lives amidst crime to be guilty of crime. There is no poetic injustice, no offence against equity, in a conqueror being all the evil that a conqueror is and receiving the applause of a system that requires such evil to preserve its existence. It is meet and right and proper, eminently fitting in fact, that a conqueror, with a repute founded on substantial horror, should be the glory of capitalism. He is its ideal, its most practical expression, its true exponent
Churchill, the old-time poet, has declared that as squirrels contend for nuts, kings contend for Empires. But kings-refrain from doing their own fighting. And to the disinherited, enlisted in their master's wars, a nut, a world, a squirrel, and a king, are the self-same thing. Wise words, O poet ! wise memory, O pacifist reciters of literary embellishments. But why do kings contend for Empire Are there no economics of power ? Why do the disinherited contend in useless struggle ? Is there no hunger operating, no
factor of economic society at work, no basic law of life expressing itself in relation to certain circumstances. Anti-militarist wit, to be effective, must be more exhaustive of fact, more potently true to the foundation of war as well as to its superficial causes, themselves the veil of real antagonisms.
Frederic Passy has pointed out to the soldier how, in times of peace, he and his family die of hunger, only to train for murder; and how in times of war he dies of hunger, only to prove the efficiency of his training. Young has shown how humanity is held in subjection by a minority of weak capricious despots, unable to execute their own decrees, puerile fiends accurst who drench the earth with tides of human gore and call the havoc glory. Milton has scornfully directed the attention of the worthies of Imperialism to the fact that they swell with pride and count themselves as gods for their success in robbery, spoliation, burnings, slaughterings, and enslavement of the weak. Fenelon has declared that all who would deluge the earth with blood to gratify the brutal vanity of conquest esteem men so lightly that they should be lightly esteemed by men.
These words are brave with wisdom. Hut they indict capitalism, not the warrior. Hunger, born of class society, begets glory. War does not end in robbery. It begins there. Brutal vanity is not something foreign to capitalism. It is capitalism. Passy, Young, Milton, Fenelon, to the extent that their thought stops short of communism, are futile charmers. Their bonnie words arc so manv daisies growing beside a battlefield. Their masterful periods are measured by the roar of guns. Their peace is a castle built in air. With Thoreau, Anti-Parliamentarians would place the foundations beneath it.
Pope has denounced as a wretch and monster, unworthy property, private regards, and public position, him who delights in war, and thus avers that his lust is murder, his horrid joy his kind to destroy. This sentiment often does duty on anti-militarist platforms: but neither Pope nor those who quote him realise that this horrid joy is the result of struggle, the natural product of the eternal round of economic struggle. Tolstoy is able, with ease, to point to the glory of war as a ruinous tune played to the accompaniment of destruction. But if war destroys harvests, it is but the harvest of capitalism. The care for the wounded is hypo-►critical as Tolstoy says. But the care for the worker maimed or sick, the charity of peace, is no less hypocritical. One
equals the other. The charity of war expresses the charity ol peace. It is the logic of strife as war is the economy of capitalism. The dying are regenerated to die again, like a would-be suicide rescued for the gallows. Strange that the militarist should be a wretch unworthy property, when property creates the wretch. Remove property, destroy capitalism, the wretch departs. He is its product.
Science, it is true, boasts its devotion to the work of destruction instead of construction. It maintains barriers where it should span divides. It divides where it should unite. Its pursuit is, by constant invention, to discover new methods of killing the greatest possible number in the shortest possible time. Its practice is an efficiency in murder. But that is because the scientist in peace-time is a slave of capitalism, an instrument, like any robot, in the hands of his master—capitalism. The scientist, like any wage-worker, is not a human being, but a unit in a system. War does not create mechanised automata. War arises from the existence of such automata. Slavery is reduced to a system on the battlefield because it is maintained as an essential in the world of industry. The industrial machine grinds down the grains of the souls of men in its specialization. The military machine makes ciphers of the units of which it is composed. The process is thorough and relentless. It is consistent and eternal. Science calls it system. The ecclesiastical representatives of the outcast agitator of Nazareth pronounce it holy. They identify studied calculated slaughter with proximity to God.
" Nearer my God to Thee, nearer to Thee, E'en though it be a bomb that raiseth me."
Fenelon complains that to politicians and statesmen the miseries of the world are sport. That is because to capitalism the miseries of the world are a necessity. Kings, it has been said, involve the world in the flames of war to avenge their honor or to acquire white elephants, which are r;ire in nature. True it may be that honor and victory are no more than white elephants for the rank and file of an army. But then peace and prosperity are no more than white elephants for the rank and file of industry. The folly of the robots is their slavery. Always behind the tragic celebrations of victory is the economic drive of exploitation, the urge of hunger, the hope for economic security—at another's expense. Kings do not fight for honor. They do not struggle for white elephants. They seek no glory. Only
power. Which means indulgence, life, ease, well-being, in slave society. Not in war only but in peace, not of military generals but also of generals of industry, are Young's words true: —
44 One to destroy is murder by the law; And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe. To murder thousands, takes a specious name, War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame."
Only in business we call it success, and measure the fame in credit and earthly possessions. 44 Peace hath its victories no less renowned than war ! " True: it has its murders and hypocrisies also.
Channing has pointed out that war organises a body of men who lose the feelings of the citizen in those of the soldier. But industry organises a body of men who lose the feelings of the citizen in those of the tradesman. Trade Unionism, when it restricts membership of its union, preserves that system and rejoices at the misery of the great unskilled. The munition worker renounces the bonds and sympathies of humanity as much as the soldier does. His heart is hardened and his worst passions nourished by the struggle to live by selling his commodity, labor power, in an overstocked market. Fenelon declares that, by some horrid infatuation, all men are brothers and yet they hunt each other as prey. But not on the battlefield. They hunt in industry, they destroy in peace, they prey on the civilised plane. Robots cannot be citizens unless they first revolt. Pacifism cannot make 44 hands " into citizens. Passivism, which is but the industrial contentment of pacifism, means militarism. It kindles the flames that desolate the earth. But the peaceful only see the flames when desolation is raging in triumphant contempt for idle words. Destroy capitalism and the glories of< civilisation will no longer need sword and fire to extend their domination. Maintain capitalism and war must be. Voltaire established this fact with his usual wit and added that the whole race of heroes were his aversion from Cyrus the Great down to Frederick II. But heroes are of no moment. Capitalism is the great aversion. In vain did Frederick the Great declare that if his soldiers were to think they would not fight. If the workers were to think they would not be robots. Being robots, they are also soldiers. Being robots they cannot think. Hands never think. They toil. And when they cannot toil, they are scrapped. It is their destiny.
Toiling, they produce the literature that serves the capitalist system, and maintain the schooling that perpetuates the slavery of their children. Toiling and living in slumdom, they see their children bribed by a fortnight's holiday every year into Boys' Brigade camps: and they print and circulate the papers which rejoice " that most boys have a natural turn for soldiering: and that even at twelve and fourteen they are not too young to make excellent rifle-shots." Robots wish and will, out of the depths of their economic servitude, that their rulers shall drill into fixity the savage instincts of boyhood, and so arrest the world's development. Thcv see only health whilst they help to train their boys' muscles to answer the command of other men's brains instead of the intelligent behest of their own. They see nothing in the fact that military manoeuvres were based in 1906 on 4i Labor troubles in the West of England," and history can repeat itself, even when under a Labor Government ! They see no point in the fact that the Boy Scouts flourished in Germany before the war and were ruled out by the peace treaty. Given robots, which means capitalism, pacifism, however lofty its attitude is futile.
Let Moore and Mandeville depict for us the lot of the ill-paid hireling whose members move only at a word of command and not at his own pleasure. Certainly we will laugh at the paltry gaudiness and affected finery. And we will remember, with Swift, that he has been hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as he possibly can. But why does the ill pay attract him ? Why does the tawdry recruit him ? Why such dullness to murder ? Because his life as a worker is mean and dead to taste and sentiment. Because he functions under capitalism. Would you have him pacifist? Then let your poets urge upon him the iron logic of revolution. Fire him with the resolute spirit of liberty, the zeal for equality. He will soldier in the tyrant's cause no more.
A soldier is deemed by his master the next thing to a criminal. When war is on they release convicts from the gaols to the army. Military discipline is but prison atmosphere. But the atmosphere is capitalism not militarism. Of such prison-air Oscar Wilde's declaration remains true:
44 The vilest deeds, like poison weeds Bloom well in prison air; 'Tis only what is good in man That wastes and withers there; Pale anguish keeps the heavy gate And the warder in Despair."
The full meaning- of this will be appreciated if we remind ourselves of the strong colors in which Johnson, who flourished 1709-1784, painted the fortunes of the soldier and contrasted them against those of the persons who profited at home by the calamities of war.
*' But at the conclusion of a ten years' war," he asked, " how ar* we recompensed for the death of multitudes, and the expense of millions, but by contemplating the sudden glories of paymasters and agents, contractors and commissaries, whose equipages shine like meteors, and whose palaces rise like exhalations? These are the men who, without virtue, labor, or hazard, are growing rich as their country is impoverished; they rejoice when obstinacy or ambition add another year to slaughter and devastation; and laugh from their desks at bravery and science, while they are adding figure to figure, and cypher to cypher, hoping for a new contract from a new armament, and computing the profits of a siege 01 a tempest."
These economics still apply. They define the wall of interest against which the pacifist hurls the empty sounds of glorious words. These interests arc buttressed at every stage by the immediate wage-interests of labor functioning under capitalism. Such weight of economic circumstance measures the futility of pacifism that would maintain the structure yet remove a passing consequence. War is murder. But capitalism is war.
III.—Militarising the Young.
In 1906, two boys' camps in connection with the Boys' Brigade, were formed at Bisley, their maxim being " Fear God, honor the King, and learn to shoot your fellows." Six hundred boys—two hundred and fifty being from public elementary schools—participated ip the shooting organised in connection with them, whilst 3000 boys were going through a fortnight's training at Aldershot. This was well before the common people imagined that there was even a possibility of a world-war. Many of the youths who so joyously entered into this Bisley experiment must have been murdered whilst murdering others in the world-war of 1914-18. Their blood stains the hands, shall we say paws, of the Imperialists and the inept, cringing parliamentarians. How many people realised the significance of this Bisley experiment, its preparation for murder, as they read the glory of it depicted in the columns of the notoriously Imperialist organ, the London Evening Standard ?
This journal waxed enthusiastic in the following terms: —
•• The Boys' camp at Bisley is the beginning of a great movement . . . the boys . . . are full of keenness . . . their discipline is excellent, and their shooting at the short ranges would do credit to some regiments of the line. The experiment has proved . . . that most boys have a natural turn for soldiering: and that even at twelve and fourteen they are not too young to make excellent rifle shots."
What such training means the world's worker now know, though the knowledge does not seem to have had much influence on their conduct or enthusiasm for militarism. Experience sometimes seems a sad teacher, for though she makes us weep we give no heed to her lessons. She is so ugly, we cannot be bothered with her apparently. Teachers should be fascinating in their pupils' interests. Experience appals. She never fascinates. We dismiss her for the hag she is and turn to the siren. Glory, that we might dance to death, victims of murderous witchery.
Fred Cutliffe replied in The Race Builder for October,
1906, to the Evening Standard's militaristic enthusiasm:
41 ' Most boys have a natural turn for soldiering.' Of course. Every student of evolution and of childhood knows that our children are born with the savage instincts of their ancestors—which we would have them throw off like measles. Every individual has to go through the various stages of the previous race-life—from egg to animal foetus to sava.^ from savage to intelligent manhood. And what Lord Roberts and his friends wish to do is arrest the world's development; to drill the savage instincts of boyhood so that they shall persist through after life. They wish to train these boys' muscles to answer the command of other men's brains instead of the intelligent behest of their own.
' Their's not to reason why, Their's but to do and die.'
and such unreasoning shooting machines are desired not only for foreign slaughter but for emergencies in our own streets. . . . Are we going to allow the children of the elmentary schools to shoot their fathers and brothers."
Yet, that is the outcome of our school discipline and the outcries for efficient armies. Labor parliamentarianism has no power to avert such debacle. Keir Hardie realised this in
1907, when he denounced Haldane's militarising of the young at the I.L.P Conference at Derby. And Ramsay Mac-Donald, present at this denunciation, nullified Hardie's protest when he included the unrepentant Haldane in the first Labor Government of 1924. Hardie's protest is buried beneath a mass of insincere tribute to his memory and the militarising of the young continues.
The Bov Scouts were proposed first by Baden Powell, in consequence of the physical inefficiency of the British troops engaged in the South African War. The English
C w C
capitalist press sounded its praises, and business men took it up. In America, Roosevelt, Taft, Hearst, and ether commercial, military, and political adventurers welcomed it. New York, San Francisco, and Chicago became the centres of activity, and substantial financial support was forthcoming. Czar Nicholas the last of Russia sent a special commissioner to Baden Powell, in consequence of whose report an Imperial edict was issued, to the effect that every boy in Russia over twelve years old must join the Scouts. Kaiser William II of Germany also despatched a commission, and fathered the movement in his country.
In April 1912, Baden Powell opened a recruiting campaign for militarising the young in Portland, Ore., U.S.A.. On the day that this Lord Lieutenant, K.C.B., K.C.O.V.— King's Chief Butcher and Knight Commander of the Order of the Vulture—arrived in the city the local Socialists—who twelve years later went war-mad and so demonstrated the shallowness of their Socialism—formed a parade and marched through the principal streets of the town, bearing banners, one showing a soldier bayonctting a woman from whose arms was failing her infant child. Under this picture was inscribed the words, 44 I do not think, I obey." Other banners were equal to the occasion, and the parade would have been a success in every particular had it been inspired by lasting conviction and clear understanding of the root-basis of war. As it was, it proved only a hooligan holiday. Baden Powell spoke at the Gipsy Smith Tabernacle in the afternoon.'
The first speaker introduced himself as representing the School Board of the city, and told the meeting that it was held under their auspices, the remark receiving hoots from the crowd. He tried hard to continue his talk, but the cries of 44 murder ' and 44 to shoot workers while on strike " and 44 you will get no boy scouts in Portland " closed him down in less than ten minutes. The next speaker was the British Consul, who didn't last much over five minutes.
Then came the mighty Baden, who opened by saying—
44 Scouts, friends, and-" the sentence was finished by
one in the crowd—44 enemies." Continuing, he said, 44 The
boy scouts arc organised to- " (from the crowd) ,4 shoot
strikers." Then he said, 44 Look over to the grand work we have done at--" (cries from the crowd) 44 at Lawrence." Then he tried to explain his mission, when a worker jumped to his feet and shouted:—44 Baden Powell, you are a murderer." Powell said that if the audience would give him a square hearing he would allow them the platform.
He continued. '' The scout is always to be loyal to God and his country." At this point there was more uproar and Powell was forced to quit. He had not had the floor more than eight minutes.
The Chairman then asked if anyone in the crowd would like to say anything on the boy scout movement. Allan M'Donald of the I.W.W., answered and took the platform. He wound up by saying: —
" Baden Powell, you say you arp going to teach the workers how to be useful; the working-class has always been useful, and you can't teach us anything."
The entire meeting didn't last forty-five minutes. Had the opposition been fundamental and not merely effervescent, as all capitalist Socialism, all reformism, and parliamen-tarianism is, the meeting would have been a failure for capitalism and a victory for the workers. But the war proved that Powell had conquered after all.
The remarkable thing about this boy scout campaign is that Baden Powell—the English patriot—goes to America to rouse American patriotism. And the governing class of both countries welcome him. Why ? Because his activity serves to drown Socialist propaganda in patriotic sentimentalism and national superstition. This suits the interests of the capitalist assassins of the earth. It must be confessed that Baden Powell has succeeded with the aid and best wishes of the parliamentary Socialists.
Prior to the world-war and as unquestionable preparation for that monstrous blood-bath, in every country where the movement flourished, boy-scout masters taught the lads always to be on the look-out for an imaginary enemy. They were taken through the wooded portions of country and taught how to approach this ghostly enemy in the most approved military fashion. In this way, the mind became obsessed with the idea of an enemy. And so the youth of the world was taught to do battle with the youth of the world—as the enemies of human progress order them. The result was seen in August, 1914.
Two thousand members of the boy-scout organisation in Belgium took part in the Great War! Every Scout Commissioner in the British Isles was warned, when the cloud burst, that all scouts possible would be needed in 44 the present crisis." Within a week, twenty-two thousand boys, in the London area alone, were willing to serve. Their duties included tne following: —
(1) Billetting, commandeering, warning, etc.
(2) Despatch-riding, signalling, wireless operating, etc.
(3) Guarding and patrolling bridges, culverts, telegraph lines, etc., against damage by individual spies.
(4) Collecting information as to supplies, transport, etc., available.
(5) Acting as guides, orderlies, etc., forwarding despatches dropped by air-cratt.
(6) Watching estuaries and ports, guiding vessels in un-buoyed channels, or showing lights to friendly vessels, etc., and assisting coastguards.
Training for these duties occurred in the autumn before the war, when the scouts were employed at the Army manoeuvres in the Midlands. With the development of the war. in view of the work of the boy scouts in connection with the war, the War Oflice announced the Government recognition of the boy scout uniform as that of a pubtic service non-military body !
Comment on this 41 non-military " cant is furnished by the opinions contained and publicly spoken, concerning the movement by leading American soldiers.
Major-General Leonard Wood, whilst U.S.A. Secretary of State for War in 1914, established military training camps for the boy scouts of America. He announced that they were a great military asset, and would increase materially the reserve of the United States Armv.
Major-General E. C. Young, c/f the Illinois National Guard, avowed: —
" I thoroughly approve of the Hoy Scout niovmeut. The beginning of lh»- military man should start in the school. That is where it can gft a firm grasp on the boy. He is inspired by drills and other features of the scoul plan, and strives to get ahead. Added military spirit should be instilled in the boy through the training in the schools."
Captain Edward H. While, retired, said: —
** The ' scout ' organization would be a 1 feeder ' for our National Guard, the bulwark of our army, and when necessary, could feed the army itself."
Similar testimony came from Major-General Frederick Dent Grant, General Nelson A. Miles, and Colonel Chauncy Dewey. These men paid their tribute to Baden Powell and the militarisation of the young, whilst the world was at war.
Against this sickening cant of the glorv of war, we place the testimony of another American soldier, General Sherman, who declared: —
" I con/ess, without shame, that I am tired and sick of war- Its glory is all moonshiiv. It is only those who have neither heard a shot, nor heard the .shrinks an«.l groans of the wounded, who cry aloud for more war, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell."
It is for hell—or hell on earth, for hell ended only by the grave—a very common grave, and often a grave en masse —that the militarisation of the young prepares each generation.
The boy scout movement in America had been in existence a few years before Baden Powell made his U.S.A. tour 44 to ginger " things along. The founders of the movement issued a manifesto in New York, in July, 1910, defining their aim and object. The assured the American public that the organisation existed merely " i<> lake (he boys into c'sh air and give ihem wanly attributes " ! But they added, as a sign of significant afterthought, a lady's postscript that tells the whole story, " The movement recognises that EXCESSIVE PEACE may he more disastrous than war."
And no one said them nay !
In 1924, Ramsay MacDonald, as first Labor Premier, received the Freedom of the City of Glasgow. He made an exceedingly stupid and vapid speech, that was applauded by the capitalist press because it was so essentially untruthful to Socialism. A few days before, Sir Robert Baden Powell was welcomed to the city in connection with the Scottish boy scouts' rally. MacDonaJd's hosts were Baden Powell's hosts. Both were fussed over because they symbolised the same thing—the triumph of empire, the power of capitalism. Baden Powell had a purpose and Ramsay Mac-Donald a price. The purpose was militarism, and the price —place, subject to militarism.
The essentially militaristic aims of the bov scouts' movement were made apparent in Scouting for Boys, by Sir Robert Baden Powell {9th Revised Edition, issued 1919), the Official Handbook of the Boy Scout Organisation. We make the following quotations from this manual—
We ought not to think much of any boy, even though a cricketer and a footballer, unless he can shoot, and can drill, and scout. That is the fellow who is going to be useful if we are attacked." (p. 280-1).
" So make yourselves good scouts and good riflt shots in order to protect the women and children." (p. 281).
. I hope that before long every eleven, whether football or cricket, will also make itself a good eleven for shooting and scouting, and therefore useful for defence of our King and our country when needed." <p. 281).
We have many powerful enemies round about us in Europe who
want very much to get hold of the trade in our manufacturing towns. . . . Their only way—and they know it—is to stab suddenly at the heart of the I'-nipir^, thsi is, to ittick Britlln* !*or this rrason every Briton who has any grit in him will Be Prepared to help in defending the country." (p. 280).
li a strong enemy wants our rich commerce and Dominions, and se"s u> in Britain divided against each other, he would pounce In and capture them." (p. 178).
" War has put the vitality of the Movement to the highest test, as it has don" the results of our method of training." (p. 5).
" Both in the Navy and Army old scouts have distinguished themselves above the average, and praise of their previous preparation comes to us from admirals and generals alike." (p. 51.
Of course, if war is right, this militarisation of the young is right also. But if such militarisation is wrong, then war is wrong, and all that makes for war, and serves to maintain war, is wrong. It may be right to oppose the militarisation of the young. It is right to oppose the militarisation of the young. But it is essential, to justify such opposition, to war on war itself, to oppose the crime of all militarism, to oppose all interests making for militarism.
Only anti-parliamentarianism and complete anti-militarism-can end the militarisation of the young.
IV.—French and Gkrmans.
Because capitalism involves militarism, the labor reformist always commits the proletariat to war. He stands for senseless violence where the social revolution would end all violence by unrooting the system that is inseparable from mass degradation. Because they arc reformists the labor leaders uphold the ideals of empire, patriotism, capitalist piety and wage-labor sentimentalism. Never was this fact made more glaringly clear than during the great F,uropean war.
Early in August, 1914, the Syndicalists of France united with the Social Democrats of Germany to deluge Europe with proletarian blood. The union was one of patriotic division. In each country the workers, believing their organisation to be more radical than that of the workers in other countries, united with their governments to conserve imaginery liberties, and so to destroy all labor organisation. They divided in the interest of the ruling class, and spoke of defending their frontiers against the foreign invasion their soil. By mutual consent, and from the same grand love of fatherland, they denied the glory of their international ideal and conspired against the commonwealth of mankind. Thus the proletaires, believing each other to have worked for peace, undertook to slaughter each other at the call of their respective governments because they feared the intentions of their erstwhile comrades in thought.
Disciples of Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue made good the insistent 1893 boast of the Parti Ouvrier Francaise, thc.i they would defend the French Republic against the neighbouring monarchies, against the government which endangered European peace. France once attacked was to have no more ardent defenders than the Socialists of the Parti Ouvrier! Two years before this patriotic outburst was at Paris Wilhelm Liebknecht declared at Frfurth that if Germany were attacked and had to repulse an aggressor Social Democrats were ready to defend their country. At a much later date Bebel declared in the Reichstag that in this event, he gave his word for it, all Social Democrats from the youngest to the oldest, would be ready to take a rifle upon their shoulders and march upon the enemy.
But peace is endangered not at the moment of war, but long before. It is endangered by the divided interests of the armament firms. By the rivalries for markets. By the wage-labour interests of the workers which, in every country, make them the tools and dupes of Imperial schemes of commercial exploitation. War is planned in the Chancellories of governments, at the behest of capital; and when it is declared each diplomat is able to show that his government is resisting aggression, not attempting it. Some years back the late Lord Rosebery declared that any British Minister who engaged in a European war, except under the pressure ol direct necessity, except for interests directly and distinctly British, was a criminal to his country and his position. There are no circumstances under which a British Minister may not plead the pressure of direst necessity. Similarly there is no war in which each of the governments concerned may not plead that it is resisting aggression.
With a few honourable exceptions, the Social Democrats, and Trade Unionists of Germany marched against the Social Democrats and Syndicalists of France. Both armies were resisting aggression. Both were defending a government which had suppressed continually anti-militarist agitation. Both were upholding a system which denied them the right of st reet meeting, and permitted no Socialist meeting to be held without a police officer being on the platform. Both
were bearing a flag, under which their strikes had been oroscribed by martial law, and many of the strikers killed
» w » «
by troops. Both were asserting a liberty, in whose name political demonstrations had been charged down by cavalry. They were enemy armies, bitterly hating each other, pledged to slay, each dreaming of the coming era of righteousness, each thinking of dear ones at home, each dreading the blood lust which was possessing them.
What induced the 3,317,271 organised workers of Germany to attack cheerfully their affiliated 1,064,413 brothers of France? What had the latter to protect against the former? Why could they not have done as the Swedish and Norwegian armies did in 1905-6 when ordered to fight each other—have fraternised and so forced peace on their respective governments without a shot being fired ? Three months later, British and German soldiers were fraternising in the trenches. Amidst the horrors of the battlefield, they were trusting their lives on agreed " off times " to friendly understandings. Why could not the opposing camps of proletaires have understood not to fight at the beginning ? There would have been no need for the inevitable later mockery.
In the trenches the French soldier syndicalist thrilled at his duly to the Republic and reflected over the suffering occasioned by the Milerand-Berry law. He thought of the fate it meted out to young people under twenty years of age, who engaged in anti-militarist or political propaganda or strike meetings. How they were sentenced to three months' imprisonment, or ordered to receive an equivalent punishment ; and then sent, on coming up for military service, to join regiments in Africa, reserved for those 44 expelled from the army." He considered that this amounted to military imprisonment and exile. It means that armed assaults, burglary, and hooliganism were less punishable than Socialist and Trade Union propaganda. Pondering over these strange circumstances of man he softly whistled 44 The Marseillaise.'
In the German trenches the Teuton trade unionist gladdened to think that he was defending the Fatherland, as he recalled the overtures made in 1912 to the Government, by the Conservative Party, to limit further the rights of combination on the part of the workers. He mused over strike-breakers being protected by law, and the trade union organisations being prohibited from picketing. Then blushed with indignation at his remembrance of the special regulations of paragraph 153 of the Industrial Law, under which, for minor offences, usually punishable with a small fine, ihe striker was sent to a long term of imprisonment. Marvelling at these happenings and their significance, the Prussian quietly hummed, ** Germany over all."
Both soldiers, unknown to each other, at almost the same moment, recalled how the German firm of Krupps were short; of iron; and Schneider & Co, the French armament merchants, were short of coal; so just to show that there was no ill feeling Krupps handed over to Schneider's a coal mine in Rhenish Prussia in exchange for an iron mine in French Lorraine. What wonderful impartiality, in view of the war to which the munition interests of these firms were not the least responsible contributing factors.
Could this French and German soldier have exchanged sentiments, they would have confessed an equal interest in the international, and remarked on the moral damage it had sustained from the outbreak of war. They would have acknowledged a common surprise at the degeneracy evidenced by the following facts, but would have failed to see that they were individually perpetuating this very surprising degeneracy.
Once Gustave Hervd ridiculed the ideal of Bebel on the one side, and Jaur^s, on the other, each with a rifle, making common cause with their respective national exploiters, and dying on the battlefield, one for the German country, the other for the French country. To-day war had transformed the much imprisoned opponent of patriot Socialism into a patriot " Socialist " and foul reactionary.
When Jaur&s had been permitted to proclaim, in the Chamber of Deputies, his affection for democratic Germany, and to call to its upholders, " Vive l'Alfcmagne," Wendell replied in the Reichstag, to democratic France, with " Vive la France." The two orators exchanged the greetings of seven million followers. The outbreak of war divided those seven million into opposing murder camps, disciplined and directed bv their capitalist enemies. Every man among them sorrowed at Jaures* death when a madman killed him at the beginning of the capitalistic death conflict. Over four million were pledged to kill him had he lived and taken the field, as they were pledged to kill their comrade, Herv£. All belonged to the International, the failure and shame of which was upon them.
The German soldier, dwelling on these facts while in the trenches, recalled how for years, when he was a waiter in London, he had been stalwart comrades with a French waiter engaged in the same restaurant. His chum had been recalled
to tbe colours at the same time. They shook hands and wished each other luck when parting at the railway station for their respective fatherlands.
What an eloquent acknowledgment of imbecile, impotent good-will ! How typical indeed of the fatuous attitude of labor !
i
V.—Jingo Shkep.
The total number of trade unionists concerned in the conflict was 8,543,363, all affiliated—with the exception of those of Russia—to one International Federation. On the side of the five Allies, there were 4,573,728; on that of the German Alliance, 3,969,635. These figures were made up as follows:
THE FIVE ALLIES. THE GERMAN ALLIANCE.
<ir»»at Britain...... 3,023,173 Germany ............3,317.271
France ...... 1,064,413 Austria*..................534,81?
Russia......... 246,000 Hungary ............111,965
Belgium ............231,805 Bosnia '..................5,58
Servia ..................8,337
Total ... 4,573,728 Total ... 3.969.635
The governments of four of these countries had engaged their peoples in the Balkan war of iqi2, and the workers had been able to note, in consequence, the effect of war upon their organisations—
(1) Austria: Severe poverty and unemployment. Of the 30,000 members secured by the Central Federation of Austrian International Trade Unions in the first half of 1912, only 14,934 remained at the end of the year; 8476 old members left the organisations.
(2) Hungary: Economic life crippled. Thousands without bread. Distress terrible to witness by the beginning of 1913.
(3) Bosnia and Herzegovina; Placed under martial law, May to August, 1913. All Trade Union organisations dissolved.
(4) Servia: Trade Union membership fell off. Ten strikes interrupted. Trade Union Press suspended. Fear entertained that masses of newly acquired territories—who lived in most indescribable misery—would flood the labour market in their search for bread, and render the Servian workers' position more difficult and more arduous.
Another country engaged in the Balkan war, and affected by, but not immediately involved in, the European conflagra-lion, was Bulgaria. On July ist, 1912, immediately before the outbreak of hostilities, its Trade Union membership was over 4845. It was considerably higher on the day of mobilisation. War ended all that. The membership was abandoned, since the entire male population, from 24 to 46, were on the battlefield. The entire Central Administration of Trade Unions was there. Federation Secretary, Sider Tcodorow, was taken to hospital wounded. He remained there tilt the end of June, 1913. The economic life of the people was at a standstill. Trade Club buildings were closed or made into military depots. There existed no freedom of the press, no right of meeting.
The total number of Trade Unionists in these countries was 670,701, some of whom like Teodorow claimed to have broad Socialist tendencies. AH were affiliated through the International Federation of Trade Unions, but not one raised a single objection to the despotism of their respective governments. So long as the Servian Government, as one of the Allies, co-operated with the Bulgarian Administration, 8337 Servian trade unionists fought shoulder to shoulder with 10,000 Bulgarian ones. When King Peter of Servia proclaimed his " brothers and allies " of Bulgaria to be enemies the 8337 attacked the 10,000. Such is the outlook of Trade Unionism.
If these opposing armies had something to gain from the conflict, some rights in their respective countries to defend or to protect against invasion, how came it that they were linked up in an international organisation, and spoke of capitalism as the common enemy ? Why did not each unionist set the splendid example of choosing death at the hands of the brutal rulers of his country rather than march against comrades of his own class.
The workers in these countries should have had enough experience of war not to have become participators, even, in the carnage of 1912. Certainly, the commencement of the European struggle should have seen the 8337 unionists of Servia unprepared to go to war with the combined 652,364 unionists of Austria, Hungary, and Bosnia. It should have found the latter unwilling to march against the former.
Think of the Austrian worker being a party to the invasion of Belgium and a campaign against the British workers. Whatever diplomatic reasons occasioned or excused the attitude assumed by their respective governments, they should have had no weight with the workers. The invasion of Belgium no more benefited the Austrian worker than the
exploitation of the Congo native proved advantageous to the Belgian wage-slave.
In Belgium the movement was as in England. There were many strikes and a powerful Trade Union Press. Organised labor was opposed to a vigorous and strongly centralised society of capitalists. Conditions in Austria resembled those obtaining in Belgium or England. The workers enjoyed, or suffered under considerable social-political legislation, including Sunday rest laws, and workers' insurance acts. Obviously, the workers of Belgium, Austria, and Britain had much in common, and nothing to gain from military mobilization. But they mobilized.
Consider now the workers of Russia and Servia being engaged in a murder conflict with those of Hungary and Bosnia. Surely, their natural interest was to unite and to exhibit solidarity in exorcising the common misery which oppressed them, instead of adding to the weight of their burden. Here is an account of their respective conditions at the time they rallied to the war god's dance of death.
Trade Union organisation had been suppressed continually by martial law, the organisers mercilessly attacked, aiul the members brutally victimised, in Russia, Servia, Hungary, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Other conditions were: —
Russia: Political demonstrators, from Nihilists to Liberals, the hopeless cadet party, hanged, tortured, and imprisoned. Two years prior to the war political strikes had broken out in St. Petersburg and had developed during the intervening period to formidable dimensions.
" A*," $ays the Manchester Guardian's History of the Wi*, Vol. p. 309, 44 in commemoration of Bloody Sunday, the shooting of the Lena Goldfield strikers, the arrest of the the Second Druma Deputies, and so on, until on the very day when war was declared Petrograd awoke to see barricades thrown up on the street.
Baron Gravenitz says—
" When the mobilisation of the forces was ordered, strikes and revolutionary demonstrations had been taking place on a large scale in Russia. The mobilisation put an end to the trouble. Internal strife was swamped by the tidal wave of patriotism."
On the very day when the Czar first intervened in the Austro-Hungarian quarrel with Servia, troops were firing on workers in St. Petersburg. One hundred thousand men were on strike. Barricades were thrown up in the streets. The Nicholas Railway and train service were both held up. Five workers were killed and eight wounded in one conflict. Fighting continued until midnight all over the city, and other casualties were reported. Porcelain works were closed down, telegraph poles destroyed and wires cut.
Servia: One generation after another go miserably to the ground. Metal workers' strike in 1912. Lasted six weeks. Strikers starved into submission and politically persecuted. The Trade Union of State Shoemakers suffered vigorous political persecution. Factories modern and fitted out with the newest and most scientific plants, but without any hygienic institutions. Mechanical registers attached to the electric looms for the purpose of recording the amount of work produced, but no ordinary ventilation. Great unemployment prevailed at the beginning of 1913.
Hungary: Out of 500,000 industrial workers eligible for organisation, 100,000 organised. Miners slave-ridden. No stranger allowed to speak to them. Every mine occupied by police to see that 110 education was conveyed to the workers. Meetings permitted only by the will of judges in the pay of the mining companies. All notices of intended meeting ignored by them, and the workers handing in such notices dismissed as " dangerous agitators." Educational matter addressed to miners returned to the sender bv post office.
The workers of the above countries allowed their rulers to force the rifles into their slavish hands—to use in defence of what ? Their rights ? Before the war broke out they enjoyed none. After, even their power to assert any was broken. Well did they know that, who let loose the dogs of war. Had the workers given no heed to the national draping of their chains, Kaiserism would have been slain in Berlin, and Czarism in Republican, but social republican Paris.
One remedy presented itself—one way of ending the conspiracy of patriotic folly ; the social revolution. Each worker shirked its application because every worker lacked Socialist conviction. Not one believed the class war to be a fact, having international and even anti-national political and social consequences. Therefore the Austrian wage-slaves refused to revolt against the Imperial pretensions of their rulers; the Bosnian proletariat against the same Vienna despots; the Servian against the Belgrade assassins. Yes, all the talk about the powerful revolutionary international was so much lying, and the trade unionists of France, Germany, and Britain proved to be jingo sheep, devoted to their devourers—the capitalist shepherds.
VI.—The Economic Armies.
All armies are recruited on their stomach, from that of Salvation to that of Kitchener. Faced with "the bullet" from his job, the average worker turns to face the bullet on the battlefield. This fact threatens disaster to the well-being of the people not so much in time of war, though its evil is more spectacular then, as in time of so-called peace. It is then that the economic drive makes for a sordid militarism, a cowardly ignorance, and a brutish indifference. Men become the slaves of fear and the preparatory tools of wholesale slaughter. The very principles upon which they preserve their existence in peace-time make war inevitable, and its continuance, once declared, certain so long as it is financially useful to the money lords behind the war lords. Sentiment will not end war. A radical understanding by society will —by ending the present economic order. Until this knowledge grips the minds of men and women in all countries, not one only, war must flourish. The workers will be forced to slay each other by the organised conflict of their commodity interests, in opposition to the identity of their class and human interests. They function in war as they function in peace, not politically, not socially, but economically. Consequently, though they may one day unite to end all war by destroying the economic basis of war, it is an absurdity to imagine that they can dictate the terms of peace in any particular war.
That our masters are not* ignorant of this fact is shown by their action on the outbreak of the great war. Large firms discharged their male employees between the ages of eighteen and thirty, with a view to compelling them to enlist. Lord Derbv dismissed from his stables everv unmarried man
m ¥
who refused to enlist. Other employers circularised their staff as to the causes and consequences of the war. This document promised immense trade and much employment in the event of Germany being crushed. It threatened loss of both should the Kaiser prove victorious. Urged every able-bodied man to take up arms, and demanded to know what the staff individually were going to do about it. The London breweries called upon unmarried men in their employ to join the army immediately, or take a week's notice. Lastly, the Local Government Board advised the local distress committees to grant no relief to single men within the prescribed .ages, and physically fit for enlistment. This is how the -worker was recruited. Poverty made Charles Bradlaugh a dragoon. It made lesser men into Kitchener's conscripts. This was due to no harshness on the part of those in authority. It was a natural consequence of prevailing conditions. In Germany, like conditions for like reasons were feeding the war. Just as women replaced men here so they did there. The wage slaves of the world felt the necessity for war, though they lost their lives and sense of freedom in consequence.
44 The conditions of life among British workers," said the Railway Review for December, 13th 1912, 14 precludes them from taking any interest in their country. Their whole time is spent in making sufficient money to keep them alive. Millions of their number exist on the abyss of pauperism. During this exceptionally prosperous year. there bus never been less than 300,00 men and women out of work. In had times the number is increased to a million or more. Men. women arid children, too, to our eternal shame, are sweated nearly to death in heated factories for wages which do not provide them with a sufficient quantity of the necessities of life, luxuries they dare not dream «.l>out. Under our present industrial system, workers* lives are wasted as recklessly as ever they are wasted on the field of battle. A shuntrt on the railway runs thirteen times more risk than a soldier did in the South African Campaign. In 1911, there were 4,306 workmen killed, and 167,650 injured; ponder on these figures, and then try to imagine what the average workman, who daily runs the risk of losing his life nr limbs, must think, when he is asked to vote for compulsory service,
that he may repel a foreign enemy."
He did not need to vote for conscription. He enjoyed it without the vote. Hunger compelled him to rally to the Hag. On the battlefields of France he was able to ponder how little political power a wage-slave possessed. He was able to reflect how the economic drive impelled the recruiting agents to their task. To think of the Labour M.P., who applauded war, and represented an industrial constituency interested in the creation of armaments. To realise why such a consti-tuency would want to return a labour member, and would insist on I hat person supporting war interests. To picture a black industrial and shipbuilding centre, where slums thrive on war-servitude in peace-time, the needs of its misery, the call of its degradation.
This point is developed in our pamphlet on Socialism or Parliament. The illustration we give therein relates to Canning Town and dates back to 1911. But the war has changed nothing. How can war alter fundamentals when :t is only an expression? With all the horrors of war so fresh in their mind, the prospect of war-work is calculated to check the workers' impulse to revolution. Capitalist society conducts its politics and founds its publicity on that fact.
On Friday, October 2f>, 1923, the Glasgow Evening News treated its hopeful readers to these startling headlines: —
41 GOOD NEWS FOR CLYDE WORKERS.
14 PREMIER and ADMIRALTY WORK.
41 NEW LIGHT CRUISERS."
The Glasgow Citizen, for the same date, sported the following terrible lead-for-bread headings: —
41 WORK FOR THE CLYDE.
" WARSHIP ORDERS COMING.
" GOOD NEWS FOR THE NEW YEAR."
The letterpress staled that the Premier (Stanley Baldwin) had announced at Plymouth that the Government was going to speed up the building of warships under the Washington Agreement, that several light cruisers were to be laid down and that the Clyde was to receive orders in this connection. The Premier announced this warship work with reference to the unemployment problem.
The brutality of economic logic, its superiority to all sentiment, was well brought out in Premier Baldwin's speech. Two sentences contain the keynote of his pronouncement, the capitalist solution for hunger from lack of employment. We accordingly cite them for their pertinence: —
44 I am glad to be ab!° to announce to you that the Government have decided to lay down several light cruisers. . . . I think perhaps that Barrow and the Clyde have suffered most, and I hope it may be possible to see that work may go there."
Warships built under the Washington Agreement restricting war! What specious hyprocrisy all this diplomacy is, making, as it does, for hatred and rejoicing in a race for murder! Yet the very thought of it brought joy to the hearts of the Clydesiders from Partick to Dalmuir. Only the poverty-stricken workers of Canning Town were inclined to rise in wrath and envy. Had they no right to bread, even though its price be slaughter ?
But Premier Baldwin could not place enough warships with the Clyde. And so he passed into the shades of Opposition. There must be employment—if it be only employment for murder!
This fact is the tragedy of organised labor's day by day wage-struggle. To-day, should demarcation disputes occur, the engineers might find themselves opposed to coppersmiths or plumbers or brassfinishers. Just before the war the struggle was intense between the engineers and the boiler-makers. Engineers were interested in the protection of ammunition hoists and the studding of machine-faced scarph-ed joints. Boilermakers were concerned in the studding of armour-plate. So keen was the competition for this work that the demarcation disputes between the engineers' and boiler-makers' societies often led to threats of strike. The disputing factions of organised labor each want a monopoly of the right to bread. None of them resented serving, in their anxiety for bread, the moloch of war. And so trade unionism, in all its struggles, conserving the interests of rival economic armies of wage-labor, without humor or intelligence, blindly perpetuates the unholy cause of universal misery and assassination. Trade union organisation bases all its claims to recognition upon the fact of functioning as a reasonable and useful servant of capitalist war interests.
How impossible it would be for trade unionism to function if it were opposed to war will be seen from the demarcation disputes that have been attendant on trade union organisation. We have before us the record of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers from 1865 to 1904 inclusive, a record of disputes with boilermakers, shipwrights, plumbers, scientific instrument makers, steam engine makers, milling machine hands and brassfinishers, smiths, electricians. We have also 1911 reports of demarcation disputes with plumbers and boilermakers. Many of these disputes concerned war-work, murder-machine manufacture. To this the workers felt no objection, so long as the professionalism of craft was respected. What terrible irony! What economic animalism and calloused brutality!
From this appalling record of Labor's organised subservience to death, we excerpt these typical items: —
1889. Blackleggcd, for demarcation reasons, during strike at Silvertown. Work, of course, largely war-work.
1897. Historic struggle against master-craft. Supported by machine works and steam engine makers. Blacklegged by moulders, smiths, and boiler-makers. Last-mentioned, scabbedbecause their funds were invested in Armstrong Whit-worth & Co. This meant, war investments very largely.
From the A.S.E. Journal, for Mav, 1912. we extract the following portion of the monthly report of the society's executive.
G w D
44 BAKKOW QUESTION.—THE STUDDING OF ARM OCR PLATES.—MESSRS. VICKERS LTD.
44 The question has again come under consideration, in consequence of the boiiermakers having threatened a stoppage of work, the demand made being that the whole of the studding of armour plates, apart from the protection of ammunition hoists, was she work of the boiiermakers. . . . Evidence was produced by th^ firm showing that since the introduction of this studded armour the studs had been put in by engineers, and we therefore, restated our full claim to put in all studs on machine-faced scarphed joints."
There is nothing anti-Trade Union like in all this. Demarcation questions and disputes are bound up with the first principles of Trade Union organisation owing to economic laws.
Engineers are interested in the protection of ammunition hoists and the studding of machine-faced scarphcd joints. Boilermakers are concerned also in the studdi.ng of armour-plate. So keen is the competition for this work that the demarcation disputes between the engineers' and boiler-makers' societies spell strikes or threats of strikes, and blacklegging for recognition as the 44 real Mackay " by the bosses. Recognition—and servitude to war!
Coppersmiths, braziers, and other metal-workers also gain their livelihood in dockyards and armament factories!
What this means was well-pictured in the sixty-first report, and annual statement of the London and Provincial Society of Coppersmiths and Metal Workers, for January 1 to December 31, 1911. This society was founded in 1846, with the amusing " safety-first " slogan: —
" United to support, but not combined to injure/'
In other words, the coppersmiths desire, not to destroy Capitalism, but to perpetuate it. Which worthy aim is that of trade unions in general!
H. Stansfield, the secretary of this society, wrote a preface to this report, dated February 3 1912, in which he urged the fusion of the Scottish Association with his own organisation. We excerpt the following: —
44 . . . Our object has been to increase the wage of the individual, to increase the amount of respect due to labour, and to better the conditions of our members. . . . Our one work is to contro* our trade,
to ensure that our particular form of labour cannot be obtained outside of a trade union, and by uniting and clasping hands with the association (Scottish) mentioned, and any other Union of Coppersmiths, we shall be working towards that end."
The whole spirit of this excerpt is not class solidarity, not •class struggle, not the coming together of the workers as a class to overthrow capitalism and militarism, but the advancement of the interests of the coppersmiths, as a craft subject to capitalism and militarism, not at the expense of capital, but of other workers. 44 United to support " Coppersmiths against other workers. 44 But not combined to injure." Capital! How beautiful! Yet better is to follow!
We turn to the branch reports. Sheerness, which means war work, looks forward to all the coppersmith apprentices, as they come of age, joining the society, and to the whole of the coppersmiths in the Yard being Trade Unionists!
Not a word against war!
The branch secretary at Portsmouth, where again the work is bound up with war and navalism, sends an illuminating statement from which we excerpt the following tit-bits: —
" It will be noticed that our aged members arc taking full advantage •of the new rule, whereby they may receive 2s. 6d. per week out of their extra burial during life, instead of only having the doubtful pleasure of knowing that others will receive the benefit after their death. J trust, however, that the money will first be got in. before it
paid out.....During the past year, we have had considerable
evidence of the activity of the boilermakers, plumbers, etc., in claiming work that has hitherto been done by Coppersmiths. ... As these matters are left by the Admiralty largely to the discretion of local officials, it shows the necessity for strong combination on our part if we are to prevent coppersmiths walking the streets, whilst men of other trades are employed on work done previously by us."
Here we have an avowal of open and undisguised sectionalism, prefaced by a confession that trade union organisation is incapable of contending with the conditions of work existent in the dockyard. Capitalism is taken for granted. Someone has got to walk the streets! There is nothing wrong in that. But the boilermakers are supplanting the coppersmiths. Consequently the latter have to tramp about unemployed. 44 This is wrong," say the Coppersmiths* Union members, 44 let the boilermakers and the plumbers do the tramping!" Where is the workshop solidarity of labor here ?
The Belfast branch report a successful year: —
44 It began with our dispute with the plumbers, which was the best thing for us that could possibly have happened, as it was the means of winning recognition for our society in Belfast, and gained for us the
respect both of our employers and our antagonists, and established us on a basis of friendship with other important trade unions in Belfast."
Here we have the trade union mind in all its native econo-
mic simplicity or poverty! Our employers—the war profiteers and manufacturers! Our employers—the murder merchants! By these portents, be it known, being gold trade unionists, aiming to injure none, we rejoice in the said employers' respect! Which declaration explains the economic mind of labor!
See how impotent are the lessons drawn from sad experience of war against the economic drive of hunger. Wage-labor is impervious to the horror and insanity of blood. It is all too-conscious of its misery and its slavish crying need for bread. It has no feeling, no sentiment, no honor: only want—and work, hireling servitude.
Wrhen the former secretary of the engineers' society, and labor member for a great shipbuilding and steel centre boosts recruiting, it can be seen that he represents not only his own economic interests, but also that of organised labor, as represented by the Engineers, Boilermakers, Coppersmiths, and Sheet Metal Workers' Societies. He represents their need as wage-workers, their power to accumulate Union funds, the living of their secretaries.
Wages make the construction of death's battery right in time of peace. They justify it in time of war and depression, when few jobs are going and money is a consideration.
In 1913, it was reputed that Armstrong, Whiiworth & Co., supported 120,000 men, women, and children by the New-castle-on-Tyne works alone—that is, about a third of the city's whole population. Which means lively working class, and trade union working class, interest in war scares, and the growth of militarism.
It is impossible to produce armaments without increasing the army. So in January, 1914, the British Government virtually copied the American Government's Advertisement of seven years previous. It published an imposing list, of Service attractions in all the leading Liberal and Conservative journals, and a paid accompanying puff. The official Labour Organ accepted it, and in Dublin, Home Rule journals followed suit. It was a question of economics.
The call for certain literature spells work for those engaged in printing it. Without a revolution the compositors cannot control the printing presses in the interests of labor. So long as they wish to regulate their wages they cannot free themselves ; so long as their demand is for wages or better conditions, their interest is with the market. They are pleased to set up sensational lies about the latest murder—at trade union rates. They are glad to print the recruiting appeals, glad to print scares, glad to see the papers rushing out —regardless of their contents.
Opposition to such work, indeed, would militate against the well-being of the armament workers, would affect their livelihood, and disorganise the entire trade union movement. So organised labor works against its own emancipation; gives no heed to the character or purpose of its production ; and is very anxious to discover a blackleg in the printer of every radically-socialist magazine.
Dreading the development of militarism, the workers eke out their miserable existence by promoting it. The job alone is their principle. Union conditions reconcile them to the blatant murder howl, " My country, Right or Wrong." Members of the Dockers' Union must dig trenches. So their secretary unfurls the national standard.
Similar relations between capital and labor exist in Germany. Similar results are seen. The interests of German workers, as commodity sellers, unite them with the assassin profit interests of the German ruling class. Nowhere do the real interests of the workers as a class enter into the consideration. Nowhere do they come together as a class.
But yesterday our brother-secretary of the pottery workers of Germany, affiliated to the pottery workers of England, sent his greetings and evidence of his union's solidarity. Today, our brother-secretary is at the front, fighting his brother secretary from England. By the same mail, a common brother-secretary in America received their greetings— despatched ere their departure for the fighting line. He writes a Canadian brother, stating: " Our brothers are at the front." At the front? Yes! What, fighting the common foe ? No fighting each other! Still, they are our brothers in the international, members of the same union. Let us wish them luck. Let us send them our trade union greetings.
In North London resided a family whose father was a German, whose mother was English. The two eldest sons, born in Germany, returned thither to join the German army; the two younger sons, both of whom were born in England, joined the British army and went to the front. Like trade union brothers, they joined the fighting line. As patriotism mocks the family, so the international federation of labor shams the solidarity of the workers.
Not that the trade union brothers arc hyprocites. Only their international is a wage's international, not a freeman's federation. Potters join hands with potters across the frontiers—to keep up the potters' wages; carpenters with carpenters, and so on with the textile, transport, tobacco wood, boot and leather, and factory workers; with the tailors, saddlers, lithographers, furriers, etc. Sincerely they wish each other well. Heartily they would support wage-struggles in other industries—after their own! But their own industry comes first, and they do not consider the effect of their success upon the lot of the other workers. Slaves of the market, they rejoice in its briskness.
The workers in Krupp's rejoice equally with those in Vicker's, at the war scares which keep them in bread. It is a pleasure to turn out Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Chilian, Turkish, Brazilian, Argentine, and British warships in the same dockyard. It has been a matter for self-congratulation on the part of British trade unionists that Vickers' Automatic rifle calibre gun was adopted by five governments. It was pleasing to their international that the standard rate of wages was paid in the Canadian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, and other works of the British Armament Trust. So magnificently impartial is this trade union insistence on higher wages, that, during the recent years of 41 Dreadnought " clamour, the National Society of Coppersmiths, Braziers, and Metal-workers were active trying to secure better conditions for coppersmiths working in home and Foreig)i Dockyards. The Belgian workers lived by manufacturing arms in a factory owned by a German firm having works in the French and German capitals. That they worked for ruin did not matter so long as they secured bread. They united with war workers in other lands on the strength of the busy time, and were glad to greet—and be greeted by—them with affection. All they wanted was a fair price—for their labor power.
Could folly reach lower depths of outrage ? Its wage-labor object compels the workers' international to be at once Pan-German and Pan-British on the same grounds for the same reasons. It is forced to back, at one and the same time, the German 44 Flottcnverein " or Navy League, and also the British Navy League. Obliged to be the recruiting office of opposing armies.
Thus trade unionism promotes war. It draws its wages from circulating the interested lies of the warmongers. Pays its leaders out of gun making. Arms, clothes and cheers soldiers to the front—to assassinate their comrades, and retard all progress. The elect of labor, trade unionists organise to crush their fellows into the barrack room and to perpetuate the system—on the prostitute's terms, the best, possible price.
VII. <iun Share Socialism.
In the previous chapter, we have seen how labor is organised industrially to serve '.he brigand and murderous cause of war. We aim to brin<r home to each worker his direct responsibility for murder so that his industrial revolt shall collapse the system that spells war. But we do not pretend that it is the worker's conscious ambition to serve war-He finds himself entrapped and can see no way out from his misery and servitude. Subjection is the tragedy of the worker's lot. But this explanation does not apply to those who have founded their careers on pretended service to the workers' cause and have promoted war and militarism with dastardly callousness from gain. This explanation of absolute economic oppression, often pleaded with too earnest and too nice an enthusiasm for sympathetic endorsement and acceptance, does not cover the cases of the leaders and publicists of Socialism who have urged and promoted war and traffic in its machinery of destruction.
How capitalist war ramified itself in Britain, France, and Ciermany is detailed in our pamphlets Socialism or Parliament and Government by Labor. In the former pamphlet we mention Hyndman's " German Menace " ^campaign and thereby establish the worthlessness of the Social Democratic movement that Wilhelm Liebnecht founded and Hyndman boosted. The true story of Hyndman's campaign will point the moral and adorn the tale of that worthless political masquerade, wh'ch we will term Gun Share Socialism. It is an intriguing record of " Socialist " hypocrisy and corruption, ending in the shambles of 1914-18.
In July, 1911, we published, in our journal, the Herald of Revolt, an article exposing H. M. Hyndman's interest in war promotion. We considered the question to be one of urgent public importance. Our object was to force on the " Socialist " movement, as it was termed, the public discussion of Hyndman's conduct in the light of the materialist conception oi' history. We wished to unmask the hypocrite to expose his treachery, and to bring down upon his head the contempt of all thinking workers. In the result, we discovered that his hypocrisy was so entrenched and ramified that exposure was reduced to an act of sectarian protest and was useless 10 influence the movement of labor against war and the interests of war.
In fairness lo Hyndrnan, the first copy off the press was sent to him. But he disdained to make any reply.
In January, 1913, a correspondent in the Clarion, Robert Blatchford's paper, then at the height of its popularity, but on the verge of complete cclipse, called attention, to the exposure. Consequently, we reprinted the article. Hyndrnan had then recently revived the 41 German Menace " scare and repudiated the B.S.P.'s Executive's 41 fatuous and fatal pacifism." In doing so, he declared that he had advocated the Big Navy Policy for over forty-five years. This took his readers back to 1867—thirteen years before Hvndman stood on a virtual Tory program as Parliamentary candidate for Marylebone and pledged himself to oppose Home Rule, preserve the Established Church, etc.
Again the first copy printed was marked and sent to Hyndrnan. Again it was met with silence, and beyond the fact that we noted the different translations of our exposure in the Anarchist and Socialist journals of the Continent, the matter was dropped so far as we were concerned.
On November 7, 1913, the Clarion reopened the matter in the following answer to a corespondent: —
" Alice Hull.—Whoever told you that Hyndrnan has a financial interest in gun factories and Dreadnoughts is a liar."
We wrote at once, to the Clarion, pointing out that the answer was far from satisfactory. We entered a strong protest against 41 the use of the 4 present ' tense to cover up a 4 past '—but not forgotten—infamy."
Instead of publishing this letter, the Clarion ser.t us the following private reply: —
" 44 Worship-street, London, K.C.
" November 12th, WS.
" Sir,—Your letter dated the 10th only reached me this morning, and the Clarion is made up on Tuesday night. But since 1 wrote my last week's answer to Alice Hull, 1 have received a copy of your paper, and at once wrote to Hyndrnan for his explanation. This appears in our current issue, and as far as we are concerned, the matter is closed.— Sincerely,
(Signed) "Alex. M. Thompson."
This letter of Thompson's suggested that he knew nothing about Hyndman's dual position as 44 Socialist " Imperialist and gun-shareholder, and considered it impossible for him to be interested in the murder-machinery of capitalism. The
editorial attitude, when Thompson and Blatchford did know about these interests from Hyndman himself, magnificently disdained its horror at such possibility and reduced the question from one of principle to one of time.
The Clarion, for November 14, 1913, published an editorial from the pen of Thompson, designating us as " Messieur* the liars," and declaring that our 14 lie " was 44 deceased.'* This accompanied a letter from the pen of Hyndman admitting that our charge was true !
Headed 44 A Slander Refuted," Thompson's editorial stated these alleged facts, which combined confession with
romance wonderfully well: —
*
0 My answer to two correspondents who suspected H. M. Hyndman of fomenting wars in order to promote the sale of war-like ironmongery h;is prompted another correspondent to send an Anarchist paper giving particular* ol a gun company in which our Grand Old Man was interested several yrars ago. At that time Mr. Hyndman was in control of a powerful syndicate which look up the Colt gun as being a superior weapon to the Maxim. Then the South African War broke out, and Mr. Hyndman gave practical evidence of his disinterestedness and incurred ihe raging enmity of his fellow-shareholders by agitating against war in opposition 1 o his own as w<nll as his syndicate's interests. Sintt then He Has had no interest whatever in any weapon or war material ventures.'1
Appended to this curious statement was Hyndman's letter
10 Thompson: —
44 1 Sir,—In answer to your inquiry, it is quite true that I was interested in the Colt gun. So little did this weigh with me that 1 agitated vigorously against the war in South Africa at considerable ritk, as, I think is very well known. I wonder my assailants, whoever they may he, do not contend that I helped to foment the war, in order to increase the value of the share*.
* But for your letter I should not have paid any attention to this Mirt of attack. I have had no interest in any weapon or war-material company since that time, nor have 1 now.—Yours faithfully,
44 H. M, Hyndman/'
Hyndman was not slandered. His belated confession was
11 miserable lying retreat, in lace of unanswerable fact. The contemptible Thompson, long since discredited by his Tory journalism, but then a writer of repute in the Socialist movement, lied shamelessly in order to justify Hyndman's Colt-gun interests at the time that he was promoting war.
Hyndman was not a director of the Colt Gun Company at the time of the South African War. This war was declared i;n October 9, J899 and the Colt Gun and Carriage Cjompuny, Ltd.j was not formed until November % 1899. It was not in existence at the outbreak of the war, but was formed on the top of the war, and, we suggest, inspired by that war. At that time, Hyndman was not a director of the company and had no shares in it. Peace was ratified in South Africa on May 31, 1902, and Hyndman joined the Board of Directors of the Colt Gun and Carriage Company, Ltd., on June 6, 1904, and held, at that time, a total of not less than 14,850 ordinary, and 400 preferential shares.
Contrary to the pretence of Thompson and himself, he became directly interested in the Colt gun two years after ike South African War was concluded. At the time of this direct interest, he was promoting war. on his own confession.
He wrote in the columns of the Morning Post, in July, 1910, boasting that he commenced agitating the German menace, and scare-mongering through the length and breadth of Britain about an impending Anglo-German war, in 1903—the year before he became a Colt Gun director and heavy shareholder !
We drew the Clarion's attention to these facts. In that journal for November 21, 1913. the following reply was published: —
" Guy A. A Id red,—If you want to attack H. M. Hyndman, you must do it in your own paper. We received a statement a bo tit him ; you asked him to answer it; and we printed his reply. There we finish. We have too much respect and gratitude for his long and disinterested service to Socialism to harass the gloaming of his strenuous life with charges that seem, to us, unworthy of any hunourablr prison."
We are afraid we are still unrepentant. When age saves the poor from the jail and the gutter we shall be willing to consider the question of the respect due to the declining years of the stockbroker, the guinea-pig, and Socialist poseur. But not one moment before will we consider the argument from age. We have no doubt that the Thompsons and the Blatch-fords are authorities on Socialist <c unworthiness." But we are moved by no man's praise—or censure. We are plain and blunt and state the facts. Let them respect age if they will.
" Our unworthiness " placed us in the same category as Gardiner, when editor of the Daily News, and Karl Lieb-koecht when denouncing Krupps in the German Reichstag.
In April, 1913, Liebknecht considered it his duty to expose the manner in which Krupps lived and thrived on patriotic panics. They ordered their Paris representative to secure the insertion in the French press of an article stating that the French military authorities had decided to accelerate considerably the arming of the troops with new machine guns.
and to order double the quantity of the latter as against their original intention. This was copied in the German press, and alarmed the Government, which placed new orders with the firm that had inspired the original announcement because it specialises in machine guns.
Krupps was a German patriotic armour-plate enterprise. It inade overtures to Napoleon III for business purposes, and some years before the world war supplied the American Government with steel plates at £20 a ton less than the price charged to the German Government for the same goods. It made similar reductions to other foreign Governments who purchased Krupp cannon.
At the time the Clarion was so indignantly defending Hyndman, Gardiner was pointing out in the Daily News that the directorates of the great armament firms in Britain knew no politics.
Witting of the distinguished public servants—who passed from the Admiralty and the War Office to Armstrongs, etc., as directors—Gardiner averred: —
" Now, these are all honourable men and patriotic men. But they join these boards not as patriots, but for strictly business purposes. They join them to earn dividends for their shareholders; and in order to <*arn divi !?nds it is necessary to get orders; and in order to get orders, ii ia necessary to show there is urgency."
Quite so. When Hyndman joined the Colt Gun Board, it was not as a Socialist nor yet as a patriot. For the Colt Gun was supplied to several countries, Germany included. It was as :i man of business. As a man of business he urged the German menace. As a man of business he armed the German Army.
It cannot be denied that Hyndman was a man of business, since he boasted of the fact. According to the Stock Exchange Year Book and Directory of Directors, standard annuals both of High Finance, Ramsay McDonald's 44 King of Kings and Lord of Lords," the father of the British Social Democracy was a pluralist company promoter and one-time chairman of the Ashanti Goi.d Rf.ef Syndicate, Ltd. (1904); Klondvke Consolidated Goldfield, Ltd (1905); and the Upper Wassau Gold Mines, Ltd. (1905).
Each of these companies went into the hands of the liquidator. At the time that would have some significance for the investing public. But it would enhance rather than imperil Hyndman's claims to being a business man.
When the gun company was promoted, the prospectus, thus described a Colt gun: —
(1) 44 An automatic machine-gun."
(2) 44 Adopted by the Government of the United States after extensive trials."
(3) " Used with great effett in the campaign against Spain."
(4) 14 Taken by two British regiments to South Africa, together with it Dundonald galloping carriage."
(5) ** Tried in England, under Service conditions, at Runnymede, in the presence of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge and of Field-Marshal Sir Donald Stewart."
The prospectus added, most tellingly—
44 The market for automatic machine-guns and carriages is constantly increasing."
It also stated that the company was formed by the Lancashire Financial Association, with a capital of 500,000 shares—350,000 of which were subscribed and called up— to acquire the patent lor Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and Austria, of the Colt machine gun, and the right for 14 years of manufacturing this patent firearm, as also to acquire the Earl of Dundonald's fifty-two patents for guns and carriages.
That Gardiner's remarks about directors applied to the Colt Gun Company as much as to any other was shown by the names of the fourteen directors it boasted at various times, all 44 members of the Fourth Estate and Convinced Socialists," e.g.—
The Rt. Hon. the Earl of Westmoreland, J.P.?
Lt.-Gen. Sir Seymour John Blace, Bt., C.B.;
Admiral Lester Keppel;
H.H. Prince Victor Duleep Singh; etc.
These names gave one to reflect. They were those of persons interested in war promotion. Their confederate, H. M. Hyndman, shared their interests, and so he shouted loudly for an increase in armaments, knowing or expecting that he would gain substantially from their increase. His attitude was one of latent and actual crime, unless war, which is mass legal human murder, be regarded as deserving of admiration rather than censure.
We considered Thompson's apology for Hyndman to be a eulogy of trafficking in death. Accordingly we sent an advertisement of the December, 1913, issue of the Herald of Revolt announcing an article on " Hyndman's Guns and Clarion Whitewash." With this we included a letter to the editor for publication. Here is his reply: —
44 21 Tudor Street, E.C Nov. 14th, 1913.
" Deai Sir,—I think I have written you once before that the columns-of the Daily Herald are nor open to an attack of this character upon Mr. H. M. Hyndman.. We have got something more important on hand and have not got the space to devote to it, let alone the time to investigate any charge you may make, and I am sorry to say we cannot insert your advertisement either. You are at liberty to make what use you like of this letter. I should have thought that you had something better to do with vour time.
" Yours faithfully,
(Signed) " Charles Lapworth.
Managing Editor."
Lapworth was a very poor creature and lasted no distance. But much labor clamor boosted and heeded him at this time.
His letter spoke tor itself. Once more Satan rebuked sin. Under Lapworth*s editorship, the Daily Herald had pursued a bitter personal campaign against Ramsay MacDonald. It had attacked, with equal vanity of result, Rulus Isaacs, over the Marconi scandal. Hyndman had spoken, time and again of Samuel's Silver Deal ! All this was permissable. But to come to grips with the murder agencies of capitalism was unforgivable. Lapworth decided the question with a wealth of Socialist knowledge and experience.
For example: Stephen Swift, the London publisher, announced in the Press, for June 27, 1912 the publication fully illustrated at 10s. 6d., of 44 Tripoli and Yoi'NG Italy by diaries I.apworlh and Helen Zimmem."
This work had been issued the year before Lapworth wrote to us, defending the Socialist integrity of Hyndman ! The publisheis boasted of Lapworth's work in their announcements:—
" A laige order for copies . . . has been received from the Italian Government that it may distribute them among the Embassies and Consulates."
The Times calied it " a full statement of the Italian case for the war " and applauded its 44 carefully compiled account of the resources and possibilities of the new colony.'* The Pall Mall Gazette declared that it told 44 the real story of the Tripolitan campaign ... in an engrossing way." And the Italian Premier wrote an official letter of congratulation to the author of a book that stressed 44 the sincerity and righteousness " of the Italian Government in its Tripoli campaign.
A man with this record, the hireling defender of the Tripoli infamy, was able, as a paid apologist of the Labor move-merit, to rebuke us lor exposing Hyndman's financial interests in war promotion ! The movement that was too poor to feed its pioneers could subsidise its Judas Iscariots !.
The Colt Gun Company went into liquidation in November, 1907, and Hyndman had no further interest in promoting the German War Scare, and so pioneering the debacle of the Great War. But the following year the disgraceful agitation boomed, its author this time being one, Mulliner, of the Coventry Ordnance Works. This gentleman drew ,£,'7000 a year. That was an incentive to inspire the press, parliament, and cabinet. His statements were false, but the call for guns and dreadnoughts increased. The profits of the armament firms rose by leaps and bounds, and Hyndman found a willing public prepared for his ex-cathedra utterances on Imperial policy in relation to Germany. He must have regretted the all too early liquidation of the Colt Gun Company, but found consolation in being acclaimed as a prophet. Vanity completed what interest had begun: and so, in 1910, Hyndman began his shameful and shameless Morning Post articles, insisting on the " German Menace," and boasting of his long propagation of the idea—during the time he was engaged in arming Germany, at a price !
We wonder how much desolation by war, how much retardment of the growth of the anti-militaristic idea could be traced to this jingoistic activity of Hyndman. Kropotkin condoled with him and favored his German Menace " program that liquidated all Socialism and compelled the workers to the shambles. Tillet embraced the gospel of Anti-Germanism and prepared the way for his great music hall 44 turn " that enriched his banking account at the. price of human blood-letting. The organised Labor movement complacently refused to denounce him and ended up by endorsing his capitalist Imperialism. When Hyndman died, the 41 Socialist Intellectuals " and 44 pioneers " tumbled over each other to pay tribute to his memory. Actually, this Socialist movement was a worthless gang, and Hyndman was one of the leading gangsers.
VIII.—Socialism—Checking War!
The war in Europe, pending the entry of the United States of America into the war, supplied the Socialist Party of America with a new slogan, which ran: 44 Starve the war and feed America." In other words, the American workers, .at the instigation of the S.P., were to bring pressure to bear
upon President Wilson, through constitutional agitation, to stop the exportation of food to the belligerent countries. Our American Reform " Socialists " were equally in favor of stopping the exportation of the munitions of war. But the workers of America favored neither action . The proposal did not increase the prestige of the Socialist Party. The workers wished to export more food. They wanted to supply munitions. This may have meant feeding and arming the \llies against Germany- But the American workers felt that this was none of their business. Even had they felt and thought otherwise, the American workers were powerless *o do anything beyond ceasing work; and there were economic reasons why they could not do this unless they were prepared to grasp the logic of the situation and proclaim the revolution.
American Socialists defended their absurd, because useless, slogan on the ground that war was practical disaster, and . ailed for practical combat. Certainly their proposed combat was not practical. And as soon as President Wilson entered the United States in the war they forgot all about the practical disaster in their practical desire for status and recognition in war-time. Their " patriotism " immediately became evident except in the heroic case of Eugene V. Debs, who became, like Karl Liebnecht, but with more vigor, a convict for his anti-militarism, and gladly and proudly lost his citizenship of the United States for his allegiance to mankind.
War, tho more striking, is not a whit more practical or appalling than the thousand and one other evils of capitalism. To cope with these, the American S.P. placed a host of reforms on its program, which it wanted to pass through Congress and Senate. Election after election was fought on these reforms, and though every reform was aimed at some crying scandal or other, very little impression was made at the polls' and 44 the horrible abuses " which needed practical amelioration still exist.
There is no reason to suppose that the S.P. proposal to stop supplies to Europe, which meant the Allies, carried weight with more people than supported at the polls its program of immediate reforms. As it could not carry the White House, or even a seat in Congress for the one it could not expect to carry America for the other. We concluded, at the time, that the proposal was not a genuine one: and we know now that Laborist anti-militarism is not genuine. The S.P. had to shout something. It had neither the courage nor i he sense to shout for Socialism as the only remedy, and the revolution as the only way. It plaved with the issue, knowing that there was no way out beyond that which it refused to take. And it styled its dribbling 4< practicality." Meanwhile, the economic forces that were impelling the United States to war were at work—with real practicality!
On January 19, 1915, the United States Secretary of Commerce reported to the Senate that ^7395,064 worth of cartridges, gunpowder, and firearms were exported to the Allies during November, 1914. The November shipments toother countries amounted to ,£11,334. A monthly order of this character was of moment to those engaged in the armament, industry. Was it conceivable that this section of American workers, or those engaged in allied industries were interested in a Socialist Party " humanity " towards Europeans that spelt unemployment for their industry ?
The American worker understood the call of " humanity " when the Lusitania sank because it was " humanity " that meant war and excepted employment and more employment!
When the Cunard liner sank 1200 persons perished. One hundred of these were American citizens. Washington immediately protested against this " outrage " on the ground of " humanity " (blessed word I) and the American nationality of one-tenth of the people hilled! The second reason destroyed the first. It mav have contained more truth
tt m
than the first reason but it was not the real reason for the United States' intervention.
So long as it was possible to do so, American capitalists were prepared to supply the German Government and also the Allied Governments with munitions of war. This magnificent impartiality was ended and the Allies were supplied exclusively, for no better reason than that the British Fleet had command of the ocean. This was business, not -4l humanity " ! Official American " humanity " was conditioned by " regrettable necessity," like the humanity of the Prussian War Lords. And the fact that the Lusitania was concerned in the transhipment of munitions to the Allies whilst Germany starved decided the U-boat warfare and the sinking of the Lusitania. It was a question of economics. American enterprise rendered l< outrage " inevitable.
The nationality of the victims was a pretest that concealed the reason for United States' intervention. It was the excuse and not the motive. The property status of the victims had more bearing on the issue. Even more important was
America's direct economic interest in the conflict that compelled intervention at some moment or other, and permitted Wall Street to become financially dominant in Europe. Blindly supporting this movement towards the American colonization of Europe was the worker, urged towards war by his industrial position. His conscience was lulled by the suggestion of 4 4 4 Humanity ' calling." The Socialist Party had told him about 44 humanity " !
What had the Socialist Party done ?
0
It had put aside not merely the question of the class war, for which it never really stood, not only the issue of revolution which it deemed almost wicked as suggesting violence, but also the one issue it deemed practical—the issue of anti-militarism. The more opposed an organisation is to Revolution, the more definitely it stands for pacifism, the more clearly it should stand for anti-militarism. That is logic. But it is not experience. In practice, no organisation that compromises with capitalism can be anti-militarist. Only Social Revolution spells Anti-Militarism. The Socialist Party had reduced its expressed policy to suit the vision of American 44 Humanity." It did think at the outbreak of war that 44 Humanity " would mean peace. But 44 Humanity " dragged America into the war—44 America and Humanity " became the national slogan of war !
44 Bethlehem " means 44 the house of bread or war." We do not suppose our Socialist church-going friends appreciate the subtle irony of this meaning. Wre do not suppose that the magnates of the Bethlehem Steel Company were aware of this meaning, which is according to Old Testament tradition. Otherwise, during those months that their works were feeding the European war and preparing the way for the Lusitania outrage, or shall we say incident, they might have objected to that interpretation on the ground that Bethlehem meant 44 the house of bread and war. even the house of bread thru war " !
It was the operation of this economic fact that rendered the program of the Socialist Party of the United States ridiculous, its cultivation of American 44 humanity " absurd, if not monstrous! It drew its party dues from " the hottse of bread thru war " ! Its pacifism was not taken seriously. It was never intended to be taken seriously. In the intriguing language of these days of cultivated democracy, its program was a gesture and nothing but a gesture. We live in times when to be fundamental is to sin against all social tradition.
According to Luke ii. IS, 15, with its fifth century inven~
CW E
lion, the angel proclaimed the birth of 4' peace on earth and goodwill towards men " at Bethlehem! And the shepherds went somewhat too joyously to see what thing had come to pass. The entire scene is mythical as well as mythological, and the proclamation, even as a legend, wis somewhat premature. Where is this peace and goodwill that came to pass and was made known unto men and the sons of men, the mothers and daughters of men ? Search the four corners of the earth and you will search in vain, even as you would for Socialism in a Labor Government's 41 King's Speech " !
Jesus should have been 44 born again " that the plenary understanding of theological fiction might appear to be historical. For it is noticeable that whilst ecclesiastics explain away as mystical every direct moral injunction and precept the obviously subjective and mystical appeals only to their objective understanding and is presented as a question of hard, material fact. No mind is so gross and grotesque as the suburban religious mind. We always smile when men of god pass us and parade their airs of solemnity and profound understanding. Their intimacy with the eternal verities is always a matter for painful speculation. The subtle ironies of their Christianity, during the war period, would have made the reincarnation of Jesus, his rebirth, a dangerous experiment for even god to have entered upon.
Even if Jesus did not hail from Bethlehem long ago, in those days of a census that was never taken, he should have mede a point of doing so in those first months of the war, had he been reborn: but he should have been reborn in his maturity and so have escaped unnecessary travail of fife and knowledge. He would have to be sure that it was Bethlehem U.S.A.. and even with his citizenship papers O.K. he would have risked the gaol if he had gone to war with the millionaire Phariseeism that flourished in 44 God's Own Country." He would have needed to have been less 44 down and out " than in his Palestine days. It is funny to consider that when all the talk about God is reduced to the terms of the practical understanding of the people who prate about divinity most, there is no room for God on earth without a passport. The Son of Man would never be allowed beyond Ellis Island. He would languish beneath the Statue of Liberty, and perhaps have to listen-in, if fortunate, to third-rate sermons in eulogy of his influence! Patriotism has no room for God and no belief in the Son of Man. It is an outrageous blasphemy to pretend that a man can be a Chris-nan and a patriot, a disciple of Jesus and a soldier, a believer jji God and a Statesman. The writer is an Atheist. But he hurls this blasphemy of a God of Murder, a God of War, ki God of War Bond smugness, in-the teeth of the liars who maintain this falsehood for their own interests. Having less than mortal souls, they pretend to immortality. They disbelieve not merely in God, but in providence in retribution. They believe there is no day of reckoning and no redemption for the poor. Perhaps they scoff too brazenly !
Imagine those first ten months of war ! Think of Christian Evidence and the name, Bethlehem! And then consider the hell's activity of Bethlehem Steel Works. Let us go even unto the Bethlehem of this time, and see the thing which came to pass, and that the War-Trader made known unto the Christian world without endangering his church membership.
The total ammunition and ordnance contracts given to the Bethlehem Steel Works by the British Government during those ten months was more than ^20,850,000. The daily output of the works was 85,000 shells. A fuse factory was established where shells were loaded. About 1000 girls, men, and boys were employed at the loading plant alone at first, and the number was increased to 2000.
Several successful tests of a new style lyddite shell were made by Captain Scott, of the British Army. Seven cows were herded a mile and a half from the testing cannon, and all were killed by a single explosion. So powerful was this new explosive that the steel-shell did not burst into fragments, but broke into bits which carried death 100 yards from the bursting point.
In response to the urgent demand of the British Government the Bethlehem Company was obliged to turn some of the work out to sub-contractors, the largest of which was the Baldwin Locomotive Works of Philadelphia. Which shows the compensations of war, and enables us to reflect upon the Stars and Stripes humanity to which the Socialist party addressed itself so vainly. By feeding the war, America fed America! The conflict at its outbreak menaced American workers with famine and unemployment. But it found them work to do in abundance turning out, for a living, the means of death. Such was the humanity, the innocence, and the neutrality of the hunger-line!
That there were no limits to its depravity was proven by the following advertisement, published on page 27, l< Buying Sect ion/* o1 the AfficTicuH Machinist, for May 6, 1915 i-—-
" WORTH KNOWING.
14 On the opposite page, we show two sizes of high explosive shell* which can bo produced from the bar on our 4 1/2 in. Pedestal Base Machine (see cut on opposite page).
• 4< On this machine we can finish a 13-lb. shell all over, as it appears from v*ry tough material from which shells are made, in 24 miftutes, and from ordinary machine steel in 17 minutes.
44 The 18-lb. shell in 30 minutes, or from regular machine steel, in 22 minutes.
44 When you figure about $1.00 per day for operating this machine, you ran then arrive at the actual labor cost for producing the piece.
i4 VW are going to say a little more — something which might be interesting. The following is a description of the 13- and 18-lb. high explosive shells which are now being used so extensively in the war to replace common shrapnel.
i4 The material is high in tensile strength and VKRY SPECIAL and has ;» rendency to fracture info small pieces upon the explosion of th^ shell. The timing of the fuse for this shell is similar to the shrapnel shell, but it differs in that two explosive acids are used to explode the shell in the large cavity. The combination of these two acids causes terrific explosion, having more power than anything of its kind yet used. Fragments become coaled with these acids in exploding and wounds caused by them mean death in terrible agony within four hours il not attended to immediately.
44 !vrom what we are able to learn of conditions in the trenches, it is not possible to get medical assistance to anyone in time to prevent fatal results. It is necessary to immediately cauterize the wound if in the body or head, or to amputate if in the limbs, as there seems to be no antidote that will counteract the poison.
44 It can be seen from this that this shell is mem effective tlwi the regular shrapnel, since the wounds caused by shrapnel balls antS fragment? in the muscles are not so dangerous as they have no poisonous element making prompt attention necessary.
44 CLEVELAND AUTOMATIC MACHINE COMPANY, 11 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A."
Was it likely that American workers, engaged in this great war industry, wished to stop the European conflict? Whoever imagined so did not understand the materialistic conception of history very well.
This pretended anti-war plank in the Socialist Parly platform was on all fours with other planks in the party's program. Those planks lead to state collectivism, not Socialism, but nationalism and the better administration oi capitalism. Within national areas the Socialist Party politician seeks to avert revolution by agitating unemployment absorption schemes, increased wages, state insurance, motherhood endowment, etc. Whoever adopts this practical program is compelled toenthuse over the commodity struggle activity of the workers, that incessant round-about which presents the conscious assertion of the class war. Indeed, whilst strenuously urging the starving of Europe's war, the emergency committee of the Socialist Party appointed the anniversary of Lincoln's birth as a day for demonstration against unemployment and for the discussion of ways and means to relieve the distress existing among working people!
The problem of the unemployed and the employed is the same, not how to do right, but how to exist. So long as this is so, war, whether in Europe or elsewhere, must continue to flourish. War must, in fact, become general.
Had American workers been anxious to have stopped the war in Europe it would have been because they were opposed to all war on principle. They would never have engaged in making the munitions of war. But they were not opposed to war. Had the employed stopped work, the unemployed would have taken their places, unless the later were opposed to the system which breeds war. In this event, the economic categories of the employed and the unemployed would have been abolished, the antagonistic interests of the commodity struggle would have ceased. There would have been no Socialist Party, with its reformist steps, pandering to trade union ideals and prejudices, nationalism, and war manufacture. Instead we should have had a conscious armv of revolutionists. We should have had Socialism—at least a Socialist nation endeavouring to maintain a permanent revolution in a world of counter-revolution.
What was the Socialist Party of America doing to make ibis possible ? Nothing. What service was it rendering to the cause of anti-militarism? None. It is now, as we write, fifteen years since the outbreak of war. And the Socialist Party is doing precisely as little now as it was in J914 for Socialism and the doom of war. It is organising merely the unemployed, because they are the unemployed, to demand work. Very little attention will be paid to these demands. The market itself will tend to case the concentrated misery of the situation. Meanwhile, the economic army will be at work, donning uniforms and manufacturing arms for exportation to Europe. A few chapters back we showed how this economic army in Europe fed the war and silenced opposition, even against its own real interests. The situation of the American worker being the same as the European one, it is impossible for him to stop war in general or one war in particular. He does not control his labor-power and be docs not control his product. He will not abolish wage-labor and he cannot end war. He is a slave who cannot will freedom or brotherhood for others until he has taken il for himself. He will lose his slave psychology about the same time as the British and German workers lose theirs.
So as not to be declared Utopian, some American Socialists, and also some European ones, considered, at this time, how to ensure the return of men to the varied national parliaments who should refuse to vote the war credits. Their policy was to be, not a penny not a man. But it never worked out. It collapsed as soon as America came into the war. It has been repudiated since the war in toto by the Labor Parties in all countries. Anti-Militarism can never come through parliament. The proposal was but a gesture. It sounded full of promise, but what did it imply, apart altogether from the fact that it carried no guarantee with it ?
The proposal presupposed a political policy opposed to the interest of a large section of workers, who must feed war to keep their job, and must keep their job to keep themselves. Men not only think from their stomach. They listen from it. And they would not listen to the political oratory of men who proposed to put them on the scrap heap. Brewers' draymen may be total-abstainers, but they are not usually prohibitionists. We have seen the no-longer rare spectacle of conscientious objectors sitting on the parliamentary treasury benches and defending the air ministry or the admiralty. But they were no longer conscientious objectors—to the organisation of war. Wrhat they might become again if they had to fight we do not know. They might recant their recantation. We suspect no one would treat such recantation seriously. Meantime they possess no power and they evince no desire to oppose war. The parliamentary organisation of anti-militarism is a futility.
On March 17, 1924, with the Labor Party occupying the Government Benches, and with a voting strength of nearly 200, we had a debate and a vote on the question of abolishing the standing army. This was during a Committee Stage on Army Estimates. The debate brought out the absurdity of a Socialist sitting on the Government Benches in the House of Commons and endeavouring to legislate in Utopia. Parliamentarism answered the question: No more war— How ? It replied: Certainly not through parliament. On the division, 15 stood for the abolition of the British Army and 349 for the Army Estimates! We have included tellers.
The.fifteen were: G. Buchanan, Duncan Graham, George Hardie, George Lansbury, James Maxton, Robert Nichol, Edwin Scrymgeour John Sctirr, George Henry Sherwood,
Ben Turner, J. C. Welsh, C, H. Wilson, Walter Windsor,. Walter Ayles, and E. Thurtlc. It was pointed out that these fifteen would not have voted for the abolition of the Army had they not been certain of being in a powerless minority. In any case, all fifteen had voted for the additional five cruisers, the laying down of which causcd so much stir. This vote, involving navalism, was inconsistent, of course, with pacifism.
Walter Aylks, the Pacifist and Labor member for North Bristol, and sometime conscientious objector, loyal to his Anti-Militarism, moved to reduce the standing army to 11,600 men—this motion meaning its abolition. He described his amendment as a challenge to the whole idea that security could be founded on armed force or preparations for armed force. Neither armies nor fleets, nor aircraft could defend a country. There were no military frontiers now; only centres of reprisal. It was a wicked and cruel delusion to ask men, women, and children to believe that there was security in wartime, for life, vision, or morality. He had been before many a tribunal and court-martial. He
had cross-examined military officers as to the duties of a
•
soldier. Me was told that if he was ordered to pour shot into a body of trade unionists out on strike he would have to do it. The only safe nation was the one that would lay down its arms in the midst of an armed world. In 1924, we were worshipping at the shrine 01 a discredited god, from fear. After the great war, we were building more armaments, asking for a greater army, a greater air force, and a greater fleet—from fear !
He did not believe in war. He did not believe in condemning other people to spend their lives working for war. He would not vote for others to do what he was not prepared f-> do himself.
The great fault with this speech was that it assumed a national unity or integrity. It paid no regard to the conflict of classes, the war of the rich on the poor, within each nation. Vet it is as a result of this war and of the rich trying to enslave beyond the confines of one race that militarism and aggression arise. War is a question of economics, not of races.
Notwithstanding this fault, the speech was great by virtue of the speaker's sincerity. Which explains how the speaker did almost vision the class-struggle in his reference Ito strikes. Here he took us away from the fate of the military abroad and the soldier in making at home to tell us of his exploits at home in times of industrial crisis. The army is use (J always in defence of property against humanity. When the military have been called upon to intervene between employer and employed, they have always intervened on behalf of the master class. Featherstone, Belfast, Peterloo, and the numerous other cities whose names arc written on the scroll of fame in the blood spilt in their streets, all bear witness to this fact. And yet the police and the military are supposed to be the servants of the community, i.e., of worker and employer.
Soldiers are thanked for murdering workers—altho the workers constitute a larger section of the community than the capitalists. They would be court-martialled and discharged with ignominy after suffering severe imprisonment if they ventured to defend the rights of the greater part of the community, the real rights of humanity, and incidentally thought more of the rights of the worker to live than of the capitalist to oppress.
Ayles's speech conjured up a street scene in onie of our big cities.
Hark! Methinks there is sound of beating of drums: listen to cheers emphasising the steady tramp through our streets of the red-coated assassins drawn from the ranks of the workers.
'4 There goes a part of our army ! " Yes, " Our army " an army " possessed " by people who are too poor to exist, whose little ones are crying out for bread: 44 our army," which at the command of its colonel would unflinchingly present arms and then tire at these poor slaves should they dare to revolt. Let the starving fools of workers cheer, let them continue in their pride for their Army, and—should ever rifle ball whistle towards their breasts in the future as it has done in the past, then let, them congratulate themselves on the utility of a possession which hastens one's inheritance of six feet of earth.
Almost, Ayles trembled on the threshold of understanding the class struggle. And his other conclusions were right. A country has nothing to fear from total disarmament. There is no securitv in militarism. No citizen should be a soldier. He should be a citizen !
Ernest Thurtle, Labor M.P. for Shoreditch, seconded the amendment. Actual fighting experience had convinced him that 110 human being should be asked to endure the experience of modern war, and he would not take part in future war. Ninety per cent, of the British voluntary army was recruited from the unemployed. The chief recruiting officer in London considered that the extension of the London tube and the building of the Empire Exhibition had lessened the number of recruits. In the House of Commons the previous Secretary of State for War had been asked if it were oot possible to take the dole away from men under 25 —in order to stimulate recruiting! The late Lord Roberts had described recruiting as " the conscription of hunger.'' Inexperienced youths were inveigled into the the army, that their lives and limbs might be used as a shield for those who fought by proxy. it was cheap and spurious patriotism, the easiest and most despicable thing in the world, to fight to the last drop of somebody else's blood.
This was an excellent speech that showed well the economical conscription of the army. But it never touched the real question, the economic cleavage that means there are two nations within every nation, the rich and the poor. Phurtlc made the mistake of speaking and thinking of one united nation despite the economic circumstances that make this idea a political and social myth.
Frkd Montague, who became Under Secretary of State for Air in MacDonald's 1929 Government, as a Socialist (sic), protested that Labor was not pledged to unconditional disarmament. To abandon armed force meant the disintegration of the British Empire. One might as well abandon prisons and trade unions. It was a doctrine of philosophic Anarchism, of political Christian Science. The nation was a political unit that justified its existence by its integrity. The policy of the Labor Party had been defined by Fenner Brockway as simultaneous total disarmament rather than British disarmament.
There is no need to comment on the capitalist sophistry of this speech that confounds 44 national integrity " with the British Empire as tho empire was not founded on the ruins of national integrity! It is enough that it defined the policy of Labor Parliamentarism in relation to war. The reference to Fenner Brockway is another and more important matter. One can only say that Brockway had no right to stand for simultaneous total disarmament. This implies conditional militarism and Brockway has no right to stand for conditional militarism.
In the Spur for June, 1915, we published the following announcement concerning the No-Conscription Fellowship, popularly known as the N.C.F.: —
" A FELLOWSHIP FOR COMMON COUNSEL AND ACTION*. •COMPOSED OK MEN OF ENLISTMENT AGE, WHO ARE NOT PREPARED TO TAKE UP ARMS, IN THE EVENT OF CON-
SCRIPTION. WHATEVER THE CONSEQUENCES.
"National Council:
44 Chairman: Clifford Allen. R.A., London.
" C. H. Norman, L-ondon.
44 A. Suthrrland Campbell, Glasgow.
44 J. H. Hudson, M.A., Manchester.
*4 Treasurer: Percy Kedfern, Manchester.
41 (Jeneral Secretary: A. Fenner Brockwyy (Editor 44 Labour Leader ").
Marple Bridge, via Stockway.
" Branch Secretaries: " London: R. W. Sonvnswn, 23 Highbury Place. N. " Glasgow: A. S. Campbell, Park Road, Shcttleston. " Birmingham: W. A. MiUership, 26 Bridg.- Street, I'oW-sworth, Tam worth.
44 Sheffield: F. <;. Worship, 205 Peart Street, Heeley.
44 THIS FELLOWSHIP IS NON-POLITICAL. MEMBERSHIP IS OPEN TO EVERY MAN OF ENLISTMENT AGE, IRRESPECTIVE OF ( REED OR PARTY, WHO IS OPPOSED TO CONSCRIPTION. NOT BECAUSE WE ARE INCAPABLE OF STANDING ALONE, BUT BECAUSE WE DEEM IT MOST IMPORTANT THAT SOLIDARITY OF ACTION FOR FREEDOM SHOULD BE EXHIBITED AT THE PRESENT CRISIS, WE HAVE JOINED THIS FELLOWSHIP, AND BELONG TO THE GLASGOW BRANCH. WE SHALL BE GLAD TO SEE BRANCHES SPRING UP ALL OVER THE COUNTRY, TO COUNTERACT THE AMBITIONS OF THE CONSCR1P TION1STS, AND THE CLAM-OUR OF A FACTION OF THE PRESS."
Fenner Brockway was the founder of this fellowship. Il he was not prepared to take up arms during" the great war, he has no right to legislate for others to take up arms now. He should stand for absolute demilitarisation and for nothing else.
In the Tribunal (Xo. zK) for Thursday, September 28, 1916, there was published the report of the first of a series of N\C.F. Divisional Conventions, held in London on the previous Saturday. There were two sessions, afternoon and evening. The evening session was addressed by Bertrand Russell, Robert Williams, J. H. Hudson, Fenner Brockivay. and Wood of the F.O.R. The Tribunal report adds: —
44 A resolution was passed recognising that the one great hope for constitutionalism and liberty in Europe lies in an uncompromising attitude ro militarism, and pledging the Fellowship to continue th«* struggle until the fabric of militatisrn is shattered."
On mother page the Tribunal publishes this paragraph:
" FENNER BROCKWAY AND 'THE CENTRAL.'
" The Central Tribunal has declined to give Mr. A. Kenner Brock-way, the Chairman of the No-Conscription fellowship, the absolute exemption from the provisions of the Military Service Act, which he nskud, and has referred him to the Pelham Committee in order that he may In- given alternative service.
"Mi. Brockway has been before the Pelham Committee, but has-explained to it that he i^ not prepared to undertuke alternative service a^ a me.'.ns of excusing himself from military service, xincr he would consider its acceptance as bargaining with militarism, which he believes-to !><• uti-fly wrong."
ll nothing short of a scandal that this man should stand m,vv for conditional demilitarisation and disarmament by agreement—which means, as he must know, nothing but armament to the very limit of the ruling class's needs in every country.
l.n the spring of 1924, Fcnner Brockway was Labor candidate -'«>r the Abbey Division of Westminster at a parliamentary bye-election. This election made a lot of noise. We <*xQerpt the following titbit from the Star for March 17. 1924—
" Mi. »nner Brockway followed up hi* visit to 10 Downing Street, by canvj<-:ing the staff at St. James's Palace to-day. . . . Mr. Brockway was inside for about half-an-hour. When he came out he stated th.»t he had first called at York House, where he left his card with a message expressing regret at the Prince of Wales' Accident."
What a picture—the conchie enquiring about the prince's health! What contemptible snobbery! The enquiry was for the prince, not for a fellow human being. And the accident was incurred where no man ought to be with the approval of a conchie—in the hunting field! How this incident, so illustrative of aspiring parliamentarism, destroys whatever principle inspired Brockway in wartime!
At this election Brockwav stood committed to the more cruiser^ policy of the Labor Government. Whilst the campaign was in full swing, but with no view of injuring Brockway's chances, George Lansbury wrote in the Daily Herald for March 15, 1924, concerning the Labor Government's attitude towards war: —
kt But .'jr more importune is it to realise that exactly the same kin J of speech*** as are being made to-day from th" Government Benches in defrncr armaments. worv made during ihv years 1906-14 by Sir K. tirey, Lo»d Haldane, Mr. Winston Churchill and Mr. Lloyd George. In fact, all statesmen, whether militarist or pacifist, at all periods of history, have declared tlu-ir love of peace/1
Wc return to the debate.
Scrymgeoir declared that the militarists relied on the condition of the housing question and the number of unemployed. In Dundee, the women and children had to traverse the streets in a procession—a miserable spectacle of sorrow-stricken people—in protest against the scandalous hypocrisy of the cry that the men had been called out in defence of their own homes. The whole range of the idea of civilisation was the production of armaments. Militarism was wrong, and the existence of an army argued a want of faith in Christian principles. Conscientious objectors had sounded a clarion call which had resounded throughout the world.
T. W. Stamford, Labor member for West Leeds, declared that the Labor Government could not remain in officc and pursue a policy of unconditional disarmament. It was compelled to work for a practical policy oi disarmament by mutual agreement.
J. J. Lawson, Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labor in MacDonald's 1929 Government, member for Chcster-le-Street, Durham, and Financial Secretary to the War Officc in the 1924 Administration, declared that the policy of universal disarmament by mutual agreement had been laid down at the Labor Party Conference in 1923. It was moved by Walter Ayles, the Labor member for Bristol. It was not consistent with the position adopted by Ayles in the present debate, of disarmament by Britain, complete and final, in the midst of an armed world. We would add that the 1923 resolution moved by Ayles was not consistent with his war conduct as an anti-militarist and conscientious objector. The criticism we have applied to Brockway applies with equal force to Ayles.
Lawson added that the Labor Party was testea aiso at its
»
1923 Conference upon the question whether it should vote always against Navy, Army, and Air Force Estimates or not. It decided to vote these Estimates by 3,000,000 votes to 800,000, a majority of over 2,000,000 votes.
Thurtle interrupted here to point out that the motion against all Service votes was supported by Major C. R. Attlee, member for Stepney, the 1924 Under-Secretary of State for War.
Kedward, a Liberal member, wanted war to be put in the category of crime. But he would not abolish the Army unconditionally. The attitude of Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty and the Under-Secretary of Stale for Air, during the war and sit ice, was precisely the altitude taken up by those who supported the amendment—namely, unconditional disarmament ! What had come over them since their elevation to the Government Bench that, in so short a time, they could evince such a complete change of front?
Kedward's point was sound. His references were to C. G. A mm on, M.P. for North Camberwell, who was Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty in the 1924 Administration, and occupies the same position in the 1929 Government; and to William Leach, member for Central Bradford, who was Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Air Office in 1924, and was succeeded by Montague in 1929. Leach is now a back-bencher.
We exposed Amnion in Government by hihour. He voted for the death penalty on soldiers; against a soldier's right to appeal from death sentence by court-martial to the Court of Criminal Appeal; against /he right of a soldier to refuse to take duty in connection with trade disputes; against a soldier's right to refuse to attend church parade.
Amnion " dodged the draft " during the war on the ground that he was exempt as organising secretary of the Union of Post Office Workers. But he identified himself with the N.C.F., and boasted of his opposition to the war.
In connection with this matter we have an interesting ballot paper filed. It reads: —
"Committee No. t.
" ANTI-CONSCRIPTION.
"Eight to bf. Elected.
" BALLOT PAPER."
Here follows the names of 26 candidates nominated foi office. The voters are asked to mark the order of preference. Candidates included the following: —
Aldred, Guy.
Ammon, Charles.
Brock way, A. Fenner.
Haycock, A. W.
These all became Labor members of Parliament, with the exception of ourself. We opposed parliamentarism and have been vindicated in our opposition.
We reproduce the following interesting letter: —
41 NO-CONSCRIPTION FELLOWSHIP.
41 5 York Building 41 ADELPHL LONDON. W.C.3, 4*Sth March) 1920.
44 To tilt Members of (he National Committee.
'1 Dear Comrade,
ELECTION OF COMMITTEES NOS. I AND 2.
41 The counting in connection with the two abovr* Committees lias now been completed and the Scrutineers report to me that the following tiave been circled in th«* order named:—
|
No. I (Anti-Conscription). |
(No. '2 (Pacifist). | ||
|
1. |
Clifford Allen. |
I. |
Clifford Allen. |
|
2. |
A. Fanner Brockway. |
'2. |
A. Fenner Broekway. |
|
3. |
W. J. Chamberlain. |
S. |
W. J. Chamberlain. |
|
4. |
Guy Aldred. |
4. |
Dr. Alfred Salter. |
|
5. |
Catherine Marshall. |
5. |
C. H. Norman. |
|
6. |
H. Runham Brown. |
fi. |
Edward Grubb. |
|
7. |
E. K. Hunter. |
7. |
Joan Fry. |
|
8. |
C. G. Amnion. |
8. |
J. Rowntree Giltelt. |
|
(1.118 voted). |
(1,134 voted). | ||
44 The Counting of (Ik vor^s for the Military Training Committee is still proceeding.
14 Your* sincerely,
° (Sigm-d) ERNEST K. HUNTER,
44 Secretary/'
With the exception of our name, the names in b:ack arc those of Labor M.P/s.
We can turn now to the speech made by William Leach— as Ujuler-Secretarv for Air, justifying an increase in the Estimates and an expansion of the Air Force—in the House of Commons on Tuesday, March nf 19-24. It was to this speech that Kedward was referring.
Leach said: — that occasion was subdued inside 24 hours with armoured cars and ont
aeroplane. ... At Aden we have one flight of aeroplanes. Depredations by two tribes on the Hinterland trade routes were dealt with on one occasion about a year ago. Two machines sufficed to solva thif difficulty, and both tribes surrendered on the following day.9
We interrupt the spcech at this point to comment on its Imperialist tone. '4 Carrying on the King's Government ft or Parliamentary activity means, purely and simply, perpetuating the burden of Empire. The congratulation to the Tory, Sir S. Hoare, the eulogy of the Iraq force—all this is just militarism whitewashed and Imperialism condoned. Leach, the pacifist and conchic, became an Empire Builder " equally with Beaconsfield.
Leach defined the Labor attitude: —
4i The Labour parly has never urged the disarmament of Great
Eritain irrespective of what other countries might do. . , . Th.it way may be the Sermon on the Mount way—I do noi know—but it is a way (hat is barred to us. ... It is not my purpose to render my country defenceless. I am making no proposals to act alone. The field of diplomacy must be explored to induce a»l nations to sec that armaments* do not protect."
Leach knows quite well that diplomacy will not convert the chancellories of Europe to Pacifism. Hence all this talk is merely pious soothing syrup to his conscience. The mood changes and he adds with cynical consolation to his ideals : —
M A great deal of civilian labour for repairs to aircraft ;-.nd engines will be required and new ground personnel will create further employ* ment."
Leach spoke of the effect of military training, with enough enthusiasm to make a mere militarist blush: —
44 As to the general question of organisation, recruitment, and training, commissioned officers are divided into three classes. ... I he sieves through which they pass ensure that we have combed the nation's young manhood and found for our Service almost a special class apart. They arc our most daring, most resourceful, most physically perfect, cleanest living, and ultimately highly skilled stock."
How this speech affected the House will appear from the speeches that followed it. Here are some excerpts: —
41 Lieut.-Col. Sir Samuel Hoare: ... 1 feel sure that the House will desire me to express to the hon. Member our appreciation of the way in which he has put thr facts before us clearly and comprehensively, • • . how fully and unreservedly he identified himself with the traditions of the great service that he is called upon to represent. It was a great satisfaction to me to hear his words of praise of the esprit de corps of the officers and men and the officials of the air ministry and the squadrons serving both at home and abroad.....
It was a satisfaction to me to hear . . . that the present Government is continuing in every respect the policy that I maintained during the years in which J was in office. . .
4i Major-General Seely: . . . We recognise in the Under-Secretary of State the angel of peace . . . But never before ha%re I seen an angel put the olive branch in his pocket, if angels have pockets, and bring out the sword. ... I accept the statement that the Under-Secretary wishes to expand the Air Force. . . . The Estimates which the Under-Secretary presents to us do represent a substantial increase both in men and material."
Comment may be left here. It is clear from these speeches that parliamentarism means militarism just as Brockway's card for the Prince of Wales shows that electioneering means snobbery of the most contemptible character. Princes are possible only in Empires: and empires are founded on militarism. A conchie who toadies to princes to cut a dash in voting times should fight for empires in war time.
What curs statesmen and politicians be! How little dignity is there in all the trappings of office, the shoddy of power, the seeking of electioneering! These place-hunters and self-worshippers are our judges and rulers, our masters and jailers. Their conduct is parliamentarism rampant. Oh for revolution, for Socialism, and the workers' Industrial Commonwealth. Comrades, let us work that the day may dawn, that free society may be achieved.
George Laxsuury declared that war never settled anything and that the tremendous struggle of 1914, which was to end war, left Europe without: peace and more disturbed than ever before. He stood for unconditional disarmament.
James Maxton urged conditional demilitarisation and stood for the abolition of the present Army becau.se the common people had no country to fight for. He declined to discuss the fundamental differences as between the pacifist and the militarist. The people of Scotland should fight for their miserable homes against the landlords of Scotland. He challenged his Front Bench: —
M It is the landlords of Scotland they will have to fight. Do you approve of this philosophy of force a* \ am propounding it? ... I do, and I warn our Front Bench that, unless they secure 1h<* hom^s of the people of Glasgow, I will show force to them, in the streels ol Glasgow, defending those hom^s."
Maxton urged that the Labor Government was destroying steadily its mandate for world peace by introducing estimates for naval, air, and military preparations, and proving thai this new British Government was as anxious to maintain and extend the policy of British Imperialism and conquest as any of its predecessors. Everyone said that it was an insane thing to slaughter people, and yet it was called an insane policy to bar out that insane method.
Behind war is the devil of capitalist exploitation. Maxton's speech was the best challenge made in the House of Commons to this genius of murder. But its logic was that of the street struggle and street agitation. Parliament is no sounding board for such declaration. One cannot sit on the Treasury Benches and oppose militarism. One cannot be a Socialist and vole militarism. One cannot vote against armies and agree to cruisers. One cannot remain a Socialist and practise parliamentarism.
Behind war—what ? Capitalism.
No more war—how ? Abolish capitalism.
That means no Labor administration of capitalism, no militarism, no parliamentarism. It means, as Proudhon said, the liquidation of political society in industrial or useful society.
Morgan Jones was a conscientious objector. He disliked prison and weakened under it during the war. But he did not fight. He is a Labor Minister and he voted with Tories and Liberals to defend capitalism, to make others fight.
Maxton is against militarism, against fighting for capitalism. Then he cannot vote for it. His place is in the streets, urging, struggling towards the Socialist Republic.
We do not expect this argument to move Maxton, because he needs to believe in the political machine, and, finally, must support the Labor Government policy of disarmament by agreement—between Governments! This policy reminds us of a pamphlet issued in 1905, entitled National Defence: A Plea for Universal Military Service. We quote the following sentence: —
" It is said that Militarism has a most powerful enemy in Socialism. Let us hope that Socialism may triumph eventually. BUT IF IT IS NOT UNANIMOUS, the victory cannot be complete."
This defines the fatuous policy of disarmament—by agreement! The policy of not a penny, not a gun, not a man, becomes, in practice, a policy of militarism and navalism, of cash, guns, and men! Disarmament—yes! we hope, some day! Meantime, navalism, air defence, and attack, militarism !
This pacifist policy presupposes the existence of parliament, an elaborate electoral machine, and the steady creation.
G W F
of surplus value out of which to take the taxes to keep up parliament. It presupposes a disciplined proletariat, willing to slave, and to trust to the ballot-box instead of to revolution. All of which necessitates capitalism rampant, capitalism with its financial political caucus, with its Cabinet above parliament, with its subsidised press, and its army which controls, and is not controlled by, parliament. It can be seen, then, that the sham parliamentary check to war is so practical that it proposes to end wars by insuring them.
IX.—The Worker's Status.
It has been said that the journalist, the military expert, the politician, and the labor leader have a different outlook on war from that of the workers who feed and clothe them. The foregoing pages have shown that this is not true. The workers support war because they entertain the same theory of life as the parasites who live on their backs. The journalist, the military expert, the politician, and the labor leader support war because they find that they have some thing to gain by perpetuating capitalism. The workers support war because they believe they have something to lose from destroying the present system. Certainly they would like to see it reformed, but not revolutionised. That, also is the view of the governing class.
Nevertheless,"the workers enjoy quite a different status from their rulers. They derive less pleasure and comfort from life than the latter. They possess more power. If only they understood they could end slavery and bloodshed. Until they do understand, war will not cease. The masters possess office without authority. They are dictators without power. Because the decision rests with labor, we have ignored armament scandals and concentrated on the trade union scandal. Wre have brought responsibility home to the only persons who are responsible, to the fools who feed war and organise its nourishment, the workers of the world. We have ignored the cabinet to attack the trade union.
War interests are not the real interests of labor. A real interest does not lead to violent and premature death, but to a lengthened and happy life. Moving the workers away from the natural ambition of every man and women must be some false understanding, some mistaken interest in life. Man's natural ambition is to live and let live and not to die or to cause death. The death-interest is not even acquired. It is imposed. The misconception that makes man a ready victim of militarism turns upon the project of the different sections of workers to benefit from their conditions under capitalist Society.
Elsewhere we state the industrial case for trade unionism and the industrial case against trade unionism. We do not enter into politics nor discuss religion nor patriotism. We concentrate on the economic argument as to whether the worker can improve his bread-and-butter status under capitalism. Without passion of any kind, but by means of strict analysis of the economic relations existing between the employer and the employed, we show that no organisation ran improve the workers' lot in the present social system. The practical value of this knowledge can be seen, since world-war has exposed the hollowness of the trade union international.
At the time of the outbreak of the world war it was conceded in some quarters that parliamentary organisation could not copc with the industrial question, and could not free the workers, therefore, from industrial and social domination. It was urged that 41 revolutionary industrial organisation " could work wonders in this direction. The employed could insist on a reduction of hours and a rotation of shifts, so as to give work to all. The employers could be forced to cut the daily working hours to 6, 5, and 4, or any number that might be necessary, to enable all unemployed workers to have a chance of a living equally with all employed workers. Poverty could be abolished by raising wages to an unheard of level and thus destroying wage slavery.
These Utopian proposals contained no suggestion of not erecting capitalist institutions, of not engaging in armament work, of asserting any sort of class-consciousness against war. Indeed, the workers' committee flourished on war, and the United States Industrial Unionist declared war to be a private matter! The idea was merely that of improving the workers' status in the commodity struggle and not to develop his revolutionary opposition to capitalism. Modern conditions will check the workers' enthusiasm for the commodity status.
Once the workers realise that they cannot benefit their conditions by oragnising into a labor union, they will cease to do so. If the national organisation ends, the international organisation must vanish also. But the world-wide collapse of commodity-struggle labor unionism will correspond to a world-wide conviction of the need for revolution. It will mean the dawn of Socialism and the beginning -©f world-peace.'
X.—War's One Alternative—The Real Problem.
There are several persons opposed to war from principle, who support capitalism from principle. They think that it is possible to entertain economic despotism without promoting human butchery. To be the foe of war without proving the inveterate enemy of its cause.
Such folk will not espouse the only alternative to war— social revolution. They will not see that the only people to end war are the workers of the world. That the only way the latter can do so is to end capitalism. That the Socialist outlook, and the Socialist outlook alone, dictates an attitude of uncompromising hostility towards all blood-letting.
These people want peace on the basis of the status quo. They would have national responsibilities evenly balanced, and the frontiers respected. Economic development is to stand still, and there is to be no political change. From now onwards everything is to remain as it is. Peace is not to be conditioned by circumstances but to be purchased by compromise. The panacea for insecurity is continued uncertainty. The increasing carnage of each new war is to be ended by a process of exhaustion and nothing more. Exhaustion is patriotism's conception of peace. After each world blood-letting we are 10 trust the system, which does not respect its family life, to preserve territorial boundaries. It would be wrong to end war by refusing to kill, and to crush capitalism by asserting life.
Competition means monopoly. Nationhood implies empire. Human brotherhood demands world society and the complete freedom of the individual. It has no nationality to defend. It has no need to arm. Every man belongs to himself. Every woman to herself. Unless and until this truth is grasped wars will never end. They will continue to be conducted so long as their cause is perpetuated. Man will not live. Society will not exist. Slavery must be supreme. If we are against war—and we should be, for it is opposed to all the natural interests of humanity, though not always to its acquired ones—we must do something more radical than cry M peace " in a world where there is no peace.
No real opposition against war can proceed from false principles. We must be governed not by clamor, but by understanding. We must be moved not by excitement but by feeling. Knowledge must take no account of scandal. It must know that scandal is not an accident, nor even an incident, in slave society, but the virtue. Business wants war, and can pay no regard to patriotic canons.
There is no sense in blaming secret diplomacy for war. Diplomacy must be secret, and is mischievous as a matter of course. It arises out of the capitalist system, and will manufacture wars at the will of the governing classes. If the purpose of blame be to bestow your censure so as to eradicate the offence, since the workers alone have the power to alter things, we must denounce them as responsible. They might be free and they function as slaves.
Do we serve any purpose in denouncing the capitalists, however greedy they may be, because they secure markets and evolve wars in consequence? To-night the workers clap the lecture. To-morrow, they will beg to be allowed to develop the markets. Willingly will they eat the bread of slavery, and grumble only at the size of the slice. They cannot come together to take their freedom, to win their right to live. But they will organise, strike, and riot for a larger chunk of bread. Their dominant idea is the triumph of bread. Their pet aversion is the conquest of bread. Tell them to live, to know the joy and passion of being, and they denounce you as the messenger of death. Bid them exist, and they will die to obey you.
Exploitation is the cause of war. And exploitation is wrong. To this the serfs of capitalism, organised into labor unions, will agree—because they would like a little more bread! But exploitation is synonymous with wage-labor, and will not cease until wage-labor is abolished. The workers must abolish wage-labor by refusing to have a commodity tailed labor-power, which is more important than themselves. They must forget all about commodities and know only that they have the right to enjoy all the fruits of the earth. It is their duty to be free. Does the reader think that nature evolved men with straight backbones and erect postures only that they might be bent, or in order that they should cringe and crawl to exist ? Words are said to blaspheme God—an impossibility since he is not. The attitude of labor, its cowardice and slavery, outrages nature. Honest toil is prostitution. The workers must not exist. They must be men.
What ! Not exist ! Not go out to-morrow and toil for the boss ! Not make guns, and armour plate, and military and naval uniforms! Not exist! How then could murder flourish and slums prevail? How could prisons be built, churches erected, newspaper lies circulated? The workers must exist! So must tyrants, hangmen, politicians, preachers, police spies, knaves and informers of every sect and denomination. If we thought it would avail freedom -aught, gladly would we assist at the assassination of despots, willingly would wc help to wring the necks of privileged rogues. Then labor would convey us to the prison house, forge our manacles, compose and print the lies that would make us hated, and erect the scaffold. Having rid the world of our presence some few workers, out of their hireling pence, would take a committee room, and pass a resolution condemning our annihilation. The workers must exist ! They must have their little joke! They must pass resolutions stating their views because they have not the resolution to make them felt, to have the masters know that what labor thinks must stand. But that would be resolving the revolution. And the workers must exist! Organised and unorganised labor takes its stand upon the motto of the parson and the police-agent. It must exist.
Some day there must be an end to this social filth. The social revolution must be imminent sooner or later. Will its yesterday differ from any other day? Will it be more per-missable to talk about it to-morrow instead of to-day? Of course not. Will the workers be less slaves then than they are to-day? No: then why must we wait till then for the revolution Because they do not understand. Then wc who want life, who feel and know, must tell them. One day, slaves; the next day, free beings. There is only one way of effecting this transition, the revolution. Since this is the one practical issue, we must put it to the workers as such. We must not compromise with existence to teach them that there is some other way. There is no other way.
We cannot shout: 44 Insurrection rather than war," when we want: 44 Revolution against Slavery." Men who cannot rebel against tyranny during the peace will not revolt during war. Individually they have crushed and suppressed their feelings to such an extent that servitude has become their only comfort. Their very breathing is servile and disciplined. Socially, they cannot declare for that which individually they do not possess. They have no right to be free. Revolution being beyond them, even insurrection is above them. How can we expcct such serfs to end war?
And yet they must revolt against war, and capitalism, the cause of war. We, who are Socialists must work with unyielding and unsoured patience for the dawn of that revolt, and must be prepared for it to come, like a thief, in the night. Does not the dawn round off the night? And as we lose count of time in anxious watching, shall we rebuke the dawn for coming when we least expect it to come, when strain has accustomed us to the night, and we expcct nothing else?
The Class War is a fact, and its lessons in regard to militarism are clear. The Class War demands that the workers shall not become the murders of their own class at the bidding of the ignorami of conscriptive capitalism. The Class War enjoins this on us as individuals and bids us go farther. It bids us to be no longer the eyes that spy on ourselves, no longer the blacklegs that betray ourselves, no longer the executioners of the decrees against ourselves, of a class that cannot execute its own decrees. It bids us revolt in the name of sincerity and truth, as well as in their social embodiment of liberty, equality, fraternity. It bids us assert the freedom and dignity of humanity, and to vindicate and glory in those principles which will cause the light of liberty to be shed upon our posterity, and find for labor-in-revolt its all-important creative place in the mysterious progression of things.
XI.—At Grips: No More War—How!
It is important for the workers, collectively and individually, and especially individually, to oppose the illusion of war during the time of armed peace. It is of vital importance to do so on the threatened outbreak of war. It is imperative to do so during the time of war: and we can oppose the illusion of war only by urging the social-industrial reality of Socialism.
It requires courage to oppose war and none to support it. All the men of religion support war therefore. All the anti-Socialist teachers of morality do likewise. All the parliamentarians support it, merely urging qualifications as to negotiations, forgetting that armed division is the basis of all negotiations. The systematic lies of these brothers in piety, these students in ethics, and these pacific constitutionalists are more ruinous than bullets. They are the ramifications of militarism, the entrenchments of war. Piety, Ethics, Parliamentarism ! Manifestations of Labor's subjection and suppressions! For the workers they spell illusion and debacle.
If war comes, it is the duty of every Socialist to ask himself: M War! What for ? " And it is his further duty, having answered his own question in the terms of the materialist conception of history, and discovered the truth about Chinese bondholders, to make and keep inviolate with his own conscience this
Worker's Pledge in Time of War.
J refuse to kill any child's father.
I refuse to slay any mother's son.
I refuse to plunge the bayonet into the breast of any woman's brother, lover, or mate.
I refuse to murder and deem the slaughter glory.
J refuse to butcher with the hands that were intended to serve and to caress.
7 refuse to soak the earth with blood and blind my reason with obedience.
J refuse to assassinate another man and then hide my stained fists in the folds of a bloodstained flag.
I refuse to be flattered, cajoled, or driven into hell's night-marc by a class of well-fed snobs, crooks and cowards who despise my class socially, rob my class economically, and betray and, oppress it politically. Let militarism do its worst, I refuse to serve, 1 decline to kill.
The author appends these notes to Chapter II. as •encouragement to the further study of the careers and writings of persons to whom reference is made.
CHURCHILL.—Charles Churchill was a dissipated English cleric, the son of a cleric. Born Westminster, 1731, died Boulogne, an exile from debt, 1764. Ordained a priest in 1756 and suceeeded his father in curacy and lectureship of St John's Westminster, in 1758. Resigned his living on account of his dissipation, 1763. Churchill was a satirist and a radical. He became the terror of the stage by his satires on the leading actors. He ridiculed Samuel Johnson as Pomposo and earned the latter's dislike. But Johnson did not appreciate Milton, and so is not the last word in literary appreciation of worth.
Churchill wrote prolifically, from 1761-64. He inscribed his great satirical poem, the Prophecy of Famine, to his friend, John Wilkes, and addressed a satirical epistle to William Hogarth (1697-1764), founder of the British School of paintings, in answer to the latter's caricatures of Wilkes and Churchill. Churchill was a master of virile satire, and based his style on Dryden. He was much admired by William Cowper (1731-1800), who, although not a revolutionary, did develop radical humanitarianism. Churchill was the heir to Alexander Pope's (1688-1744) satirical position, and his mantle fell on " Peter Pindar," otherwise John Wolcot (1738-1819).
" Churchill Sermons," published after his death, were dedicated to William Warburton (1698-1779), Bishop of Gloucester. Dr Warburton was the self-assertive expounder of Pope's " Essay on Man." He was notorious for the exposition of the " divine legation of Moses," and famous for his correspondence with the immortal Conycrs Middleton (1683-1750), the really great scholar and distinctly Free-thinking Anglican theologian and uncompromising Deistic controversialist.
THOREAU.— Henry David Thoreau was born at Concord, Mass., U.S.A., in 1817. Left his native region rarely and for brief periods. Died 1862. Favoured a life of isolation in the midst of uncultivated wastes and objected to living in any human community. James Russell Lowell (1819-91), in one of his best essays, severely criticises Thoreau for this pose and discovers some hypocrisy in it. Thoreau was a nature writer rather than an essayist. But he was not a Naturalist. He lacked the winsomeness of Gilbert White (1720-93), and the accurate observation and vividness of Richard Jeffries (1848-87). He was unlike John Burroughs (1837-1921), who went into the woods for knowledge, to learn for himself, and to make others know. To Burroughs the charm of the forest was that it contained no unknown birds. To Thoreau the charm was that the forest did contain unknown birds. Thoreau went into the forest to be enchanted and intrigued, to marvel and to wonder. He wished definite communion with the unknown and the unclassified. On this account, he has been deemed the super-naturalist and greatest poet nature writer in the English language.
Thoreau's Essay on the " Deity of Civil Disobedience " ranks him as a thinker and an iconoclast.
Charming, Emerson, Buroughs, and Lowell have all written valuably on Thoreau's life and teaching.
CHANNING.—William Ellery Channing was born at Newport, Rhode Island, April 7th, 1780. He died at Ben-ington, Vermont, October 2nd, 1840. This places him in history. He was a contemporary of the great Atheist Britisher, Richard Carlile; an infant whilst the great American War of Independence (1778-82) was tending towards its successful close; and a boy growing towards youth, as the great French Revolution changed the inspiration of Europe. His closing years witnessed the rise of the Anti-Slavery movement in America.
Channing's father was a lawyer, who died in 1793. Newport was a garrison town, and his father received Washington there on the latter's Northern tour. As a boy, Channing became familiar with the record of Washington: his evolution from a proud upholder of the English traditions against the French to an American: his magnificent heroism on the Delaware and his fall on Trenton ; his declaration to Dinwiddie:—" I flatter myself resolution to face what any man dares, as shall be proved when it comes to the issue."
In 1793 Channing was sent by his uncle to Harvard to complete his studies. He remained there four years. During his last year he determined to become a minister. He went for two years to Virginia, where he became a tutor in a planter's family. His experience made him an enemy of slavery, and he became an abolitionist and friend of Garrison. In his studies for the ministry Channing discovered that his views were Unitarian. His sympathies were with Theophilus Lindsay, who flourished in Britain from 1723-1808, and established Unitarianism there, after leaving the Church of England in 1774.
In 1786 a Boston, U.S.A., Episcopal Church used a reformed Unitarian Prayer Book, and two Unitarian Congregations were established in other parts of the United States. These attempts were short-lived, and the term 44 Unitarian " disappeared altogether. It was unknown when Channing returned to Boston to be ordained, and to preach in 1802. He accepted the Ministry of the Federal Street (Congregational) Church. Under the description of 44 Boston Religion," the Congregational Churches of Boston preached Anti-Trinitarianism. This continued for ten years, when, replying to challenges from other churches, the Boston Churches issued the first Unitarian paper in America, known as 44 The Christian Disciple." Channing emerged from obscurity and issued many propaganda tracts and printed addresses. In 1822 44 The Christian Disciple " became 44 The Christian Examiner," and Channing wrote his three famous Essays—44 Milton," 44 Napoleon," and 44 Fenelon."
In 1819 the Baltimore Unitarian Society founded a Church and Channing preached his famous Baltimore sermon. Although a little too Arian, it was hailed as the manifesto of Unitarianism, and it did denounce Calvinism and Trinitarianism. Seven years later at the dedication of the second Unitarian Church of New York Channing denounced Trinitarianism as a blight on the beauty and freshness of creation, an obscuring of the work of Jesus, and a falsehood 44 that consumes the very nutriment of piety." He denounced the Church doctrine of atonement as an attempt 44 to erect a gallows in the centre of the universe."
The news of the three days fighting in Paris, 1830, when the people rose in arms to protect the liberty of the press against the Government of Charles X., drew from Channing a fresh burst of enthusiasm on behalf of the liberties of the people. In 1834 Channing published his book against Slavery. The murder of Lovejoy, and the riots against the Abolitionists decided Channing to attend their meetings. He appeared at one of Garrison's meetings in support of Garrison, and added a most telling chapter to his work against slavery.
Channing was more an essayist than a preacher, and his essays against war and slavery are excellent contributions to human progress. Wordsworth, 1770-1850, wrote of him —44 Channing has the love of wisdom and the wisdom of love."
Wordsworth's tribute was justified by the loftiness of Channing's mind. Channing held that, to be elevated, one did not need to become an encyclopedia, but to comprehend the great ideas in which all discoveries terminate, in which the sciences are summed up, and the philosopher states the result of his inductions from indefinite details of research. A man of immense information was inferior in Channing's eyes to a man of lesser knowledge, whose mind seized on fundamental truths. "It is not the quantity but the Quality of Knowledge," he concludcd, 44 which determines the mind's dignity ... A great mind is formed by a few great ideas, not by an infinity of loose details."
Channing ridiculed the minute study of the histories of Greece and Rome as a pretentious waste of time if the classic records did not serve to kindle 14into living fires" in the soul of man, woman and child, 4'the great ideas of freedom, and beauty, and valour, and spiritual energy."
Printed and published in Greet Britain by the Strickland Press, 104 George Street' Glasgow.
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Socialism and Parliament
Showing how Labour parliamentarism betrays socialism. j ;
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Studies in CofnJnuniam
Five essays on different aspects of libertarian communism. i
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A Call to Manhood 1
Twenty-six essays against war.
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1 A review of the work of the Air Ministry for the past year and of the policy for the future is profoundly interestng. No one, whatever his views, can remain unaffected by the magnificence of this organisation and the spirit of service which pervades it from top to bottom. The ex-Minister for Air (Sir S. Hoare) has left many prc-ofs of his enthusiasm for and devotion to his office. . . . During th*. past y*ar
wr have maintained eight squadrons of the Air Force in Iraq.....
The officers of this force are entrusted with an exceedingly difficult duty. I want the House to believe that they are not engaged in shedding the blood of defencless natives, nor are rhey recklessly using the air weapon for the purpose of terrorisation. . . . In the mandated territories of Palestine and Trans-Jordonia, the air organisation continues to be a factor making for peace and good civil administration. The necessity for an offensive has only once arisen, and the revolt on